“A weakened virus that causes less severe symptoms may get a leg up if it is able to spread efficiently through populations by people who don’t know they are infected, the scientists say.”
I’m not sure how we let that happen without being open to the regular strain spreading too.
Exactly. But this isn’t new news. Back in March we already new there was a second weakened strain of this virus.
Well, if it was weak enough, you give it to people, like a live vaccine, only its actually a mild version of the disease.
Is there precedence for something like that?
No idea. Well, the one they found, according to the article was still pretty virelent, but if they ever found one that was not, maybe it would be considered. I’m no doctor.
By the way, the article about the weakening virus had a link to the article about the strengthening virus. I think they are just reporting everything and it’s really hard to figure out what is a real trend and what is just an anomaly or even just clickbait.
As a devoted reader of this thread, I am shocked at how little many people I know know about what’s going on. Mostly from Facebook. Someone I know just a little, from long ago, posted a rant about contact tracing. It was obvious that this person and the people who responded were unaware of what contact tracing is until yesterday. How did they miss that?
It just happens by default. Less virulent strains spread more quickly because people aren’t very sick and don’t stay home. More virulent strains put people in bed where they aren’t a risk to others, so it just spreads slower, and even more slowly if there’s contact tracing. Then, if the worse strain does somehow spread, people have immunity because they’ve already encountered the less nasty strain- so that slows it down some more.
False case and deaths counts aside, China seems to have had a much worse time of it than we have had, and it wouldn’t surprise me if we have had weaker strains here. A traveler does have to be well enough to travel, arrive in the US, and then be out and about spreading the virus. If they’re really sick, they might not even get on the plane in the first place.
It’s kind of counterintuitive, but in general, the more virulent and deadly a virus is, the less successful it is (gratefully). And it’s probably one reason why SARS and MERS didn’t spread as quickly, either. People got very sick, & there were no asymptomatic cases, so contact tracing was much easier and they could stamp out the epidemic.
NCL sharing concerning news.
Thank you for this. It was what I was thinking but I wasn’t sure it was correct. I followed SARS fairly closely as we were waiting to adopt our second child from China at the time. But this is something that stuck in my brain from that time.
I’ve had some other things going on for the last week so haven’t been able to follow the briefings hardly at all. Plan to get back on top of it in the next couple of days.
But, here is an interesting clip from an interview National Geographic did with Dr Fauci that I think is worth a watch. He talks about origin of the virus and some thoughts on the fall.
The transcript of the full interview is here. It does ask for an email address to gain access. (I was already on their email list so not a big deal to me.)
Here are a couple of the more interesting bits on vaccine development…
“Still, he remains optimistic that a vaccine will be ready within an historically short time frame, citing one promising candidate that he thinks may move into advanced clinical trials by the early summer. Fauci has said that he thinks a final vaccine could be available for general use as early as January, which would break records for the speed at which previous vaccines were developed…“
Fauci: “…We have a better chance of quickly getting, relatively speaking, a vaccine for the novel coronavirus than we did for HIV, because for some reason that’s still unknown the body does not make an adequate immune response to HIV.
We don’t necessarily have that challenge with this coronavirus because it’s obvious that many people make a very adequate immune response. They clear the virus, and they do well. As we know from the natural history of this disease, the majority of people actually either get well without any symptoms—they’re called asymptomatic—or they have minimal symptoms, where they get a fever, some aches, and then they recover.”
Okay, let me preface this by saying I really want to believe that my governor isn’t an idiot. And that I’m a margarita and 2 glasses of wine into Cinco de Mayo while I watch the 5/5 Texas briefing.
Someone explain what I’m missing here???
Regarding gyms: “Customers should wear gloves that cover their whole hand and fingers. So why this? Obviously, one of the reasons is when people touch their hands on a piece of equipment and then they touch their face they could transmit the Covid 19 germ and hence contract Covid 19.”
Can’t they do the same thing while wearing gloves? (Ironically, my gym is kickboxing so we’re wearing boxing gloves most of the time anyway and I assume that would be compliant, but this is not making any sense to me?)
Time: ~30:20
The word “obviously” is totally triggering me…
I had to open a new bottle of wine. They need to stop saying “Math tells a story” or I might lose it. I worked as a senior financial analyst at a Global Fortune 10 company for over 10 years. I know what massaging the numbers looks like. If they can’t connect the dots they are presenting in hospitalization numbers (which are harder to massage than test results in given conditions), they are either idiots or intentionally hoodwinking Texans or deluding themselves. I’m trying to sort which of those alternatives is worse. I can’t even…
More from the TX briefing “Long term care facilities…meat packing plants…our prisons and jails…we know where it’s going to be…”
To me, every person has sacred worth. It seems to others, they are acceptable casualties.
Numbers they are throwing out. Amarillo has 5 meat packing plants with 12,000 employees.
12,000 employees x 50% (minimum for herd immunity) x 0.1% fatality rate (that percentage of NYC residents have died whether infected or not so it’s a legit ballpark guess). ~6 people will die so Texans can have their choice of meat/cut instead of making significant changes in operations. We won’t starve. This is 6 people dying so we can have convenient menu planning. If this was a refinery incident, there would be extensive root cause analysis done to prevent future occurrences. Yet we see it coming and accept it.
My standard of life > lives of others
Extensive re-opening will lead to more areas with community spread. Which means more of these “contained communities” will have outbreaks. Unless they isolate every staff member or test them before every shift, which is not being proposed, it is going to happen. They haven’t been able to protect them over the last 6 weeks of trying.
“What matters is not how many people are hospitalized, what matters is what our hospitalization capacity is” so I guess if you die in an ICU bed, that is an acceptable loss. Oh, but wait…he then almost immediately says “one death is one too many” How can both be true? (1:04). He also lists places in the US (NY, NOLA, Chicago, etc) and says “they did not have the hospital capacity to deal with the challenges”. I‘m pretty sure none of them actually exceeded their surge capacity. That is not what caused their deaths.
Surely there are other ways to make sure hair dressers and movie theater employees have the income to get by then accepting people need to die? Are we not smarter than this?
The kids and I are desperately in need of a haircut and having a huge moral struggle. We’ve used the same dear hairdresser for 20+ years, and apparently I can legally book with her for Friday. Maybe I have my DH chop my bangs and still send her a check.
Oh, and another lovely gem he threw in right at the end. Apparently per his discussions with Dr Birx, schools should plan to open up earlier than normal in the fall leaving a longer winter break “with the concern slash anticipation being…there may need to be…a longer period of time…[during flu/Covid season] not to have the students gather…”
Have you been up all night? 
How are you going to stay awake to see the Blue Angels fly over today? 
Thank you for the video!
54 people have died in a long term health facility in my city, and another 100 Have tested positive so far. I started to hear rumors a couple of weeks ago but it has now made the news.
This needs attention everywhere. It’s devastating.
How is it being transmitted?
Are they understaffed?
Not enough PPE? Not enough education?
In the UK it’s not enough PPE.
There are investigations all over the state.I believe the report was that more than half of our deaths are from long term facilities. That would be over 2000 deaths.