Covid

This ‘sanity check’ from Bloomberg is worth a look : **LINK**

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2022-02-13/when-will-covid-end-what-new-covid-variants-post-pandemic-life-mean-for-2022

MichaelG.

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P.S. __ Cookiephobes will be pleased to see that the ‘Reject All’ button on that site appears to work as it should.

Edited By Michael Gilligan on 14/02/2022 09:07:35

For a highly mutable disease, one generally expects variants to be milder. That is based on the simple fact that usually there will be some cross protection between those variants so they don't spread as quickly through a population with an element of herd immunity from having been ravaged by a highly infectious variant and the reality that highly fatal variants kill the host before it can spread it well. Statistically it's more likely that one becomes complacent with mild cases and the levels of herd immunity drops over time and then if a nasty variant develops the game starts over.
If we take a lesson from history with Spanish flu it burned out in about 3 years - by killing off 1/3 of the global population and leaving the rest immune for a time. Of course that wasn't the end of influenza and as we all know outbreaks happen almost annually with the guessing game of which variant is next.
Also it's often not the primary virus that is responsible for fatalities. In the case of Spanish flu the virus damaged lungs and allowed secondary bacterial infections that would normally be rattling around but contained to go rife - and there were no effective antibiotics then. In the case of Covid19 the biggest battle was not understanding the effect on blood clotting and dealing with the inflammatory response effectively - why now with treatment the mortality rate has declined.
The big issues come from public expectation - an expectation of treatment risking services being overwhelmed and the political/public response to that and an expectation of a right to go travelling and global trade - both of which allow any disease to spread rapidly.
As for an acceptable answer, it is either regular vaccination or effective antivirals.
None of those will stop the next pandemic from an unrelated virus.

Whilst it's politically unacceptable and of dubious morality, there is an argument for not treating these situations and using them to reduce population and allow evolution to do it's thing - so long as I don't catch it....

pgk

Sobering to think we are in the third Coronavirus-family pandemic / epidemic, each of a different disease, already... this century.

It's Flu so its never going away

and the more rats there are the more easily any disease transmits through that rat population

with 8-10 billion human rats scurrying about using the perfect global disease transmission system (aka jet plane transport) then it doesn't take a scientist to see the future

The other problem is peoples' self-obsession with their health, especially our politicians who are 95% cowards and would never take a risk

With Darwinism the future belongs to those who face reality and get on with life

Previous generations would have mocked our patheticness

This is a war and adopting a funk-hole mentality will not win that war

Edited By Ady1 on 14/02/2022 10:29:31

With you ADY1 but the there are certain people who regard these views as subversive..

Having lost the mother in law to covid right at the beginning of the pandemic by being moved from hospital to soon in to a nursing home and then burying a good friend two weeks ago with the virus again I am very wary about dropping all safety rules etc. I am part of a group of test people with giving a blood sample at least once a month and questionares weekly and monthly and pcr test by-weekly. We get an email with the results from the university involved and their results fo not tie up with the results on the government's web site with a very much higher positive people being infected by at least 200,000 cases and more people die of the virus as well.

It dosn't give me any faith in the government to keep us safe.

David

Edited By David George 1 on 14/02/2022 13:39:38

I think it is evident now that decisions concerning Covid regulations are made with more emphasis on political reasons than medical science. I am not a conspiracy freak but just stating the obvious. Dave W

Seems to be the not-so-brave new world we have to live in

The Flu is now called Covid, Omicron, whatevever

The weather is now called Global Warming, Climate Change, whatever

[This posting has been removed]

Rats? Well stop building nice new homes for them - aka " Decking" and feeding them by chucking unwanted food around.

Agree with pgk, large part of human problems are caused by far too many of us - the planet cannot take many more, using up resources at a ridiculously unsustainable rate. 8 billion and counting. How many other species have grown to such population, apart from rats? They've managed it with our help.

Given that insects are estimated to outnumber humans by 1.4 billion to one, quite a few, I'd imagine.

That sounds more like social Darwinism than Darwinism.

Darwinian natural selection doesn't necessarily favour the survival of organisms that face reality and get on with life [whatever is meant by that]; it favours the survival of genes that, in spite of or because of the environment in which the phenotypes carrying them live, happen to get passed on.

"Social Darwinism" is a middle class construct

Darwinism treats everything with complete equality

You've strongly suggested you have a faulty understanding of what Darwinism is.

Just to remind folk that Covid is a coronavirus and 'flu is an influenza virus.

pgk

And weather is still called weather. It is not to be confused with climate.

A lot of Americans don't understand that one.

A report out today links low vitamin D levels to higher likelihood of catching Covid and having a severe case compared to those with a good level of Vitamin D. It would be nice to be able to step out into the sunshine to improve my levels but it has just been cloudy weather (not climate) today.

Martin C

There was work on Vit D levels and Covid quite early on in the pandemic, so the report is nothing new..
You can always put your mushrooms under a daylight bulb to get them Vit D enriched.

pgk

I thought you Brits loved cloudy weather. I personally go outside everyday. Even a few minutes is more Vit D than any pill.

You mean that weather is alternate name for climate ?

Edited By Peter Greene 🇨🇦 on 15/02/2022 22:26:49