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ziga

> More than 50% of the people infected with SARS-CoV-19 are asymptomatic (i.e. they have no illness).

Note: asymptomatic at the time of testing. They may still develop symptoms over time.

https://www.icelandreview.com/sci-tech/is-icelands-coronavir...

https://twitter.com/cmyeaton/status/1246196001775460358

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Yes this is true. For the purpose of my idea it doesn’t matter if the person is asymptomatic or they just have a mild case. What is important is the strain identified doesn’t put people in hospital.

The key here is that the vulnerable population needs to tolerate it, too.

Technically they don’t provided we can get the herd immunity up to a decent level in the rest of the population.

While it would be a good idea if the mutated strain was no more dangerous than a common cold coronavirus, we could drive the dangerous strains to extinction without having to infect the vulnerable.

Very difficult to get herd immunity up to a decent enough level without putting the vulnerable portion of the population in great danger though. Most countries are approaching something like 0.1% or 0.2% of the population having been infected. Herd immunity requires 70% - 80% immunity. About 350x - 800x more than what's happened already.

Also the whole thing presumes that immunity is lasting. Some of the data is showing that may not be the case.

The level of herd immunity needed is related to the R0 which is a function of behaviour. This is a really complex topic to discuss, but it is only one we can have once an attenuated strain is found.

Of course the other factor is who is a vulnerable person is a factor of the pathogenicity of the viral strain.

Well this is what many countries and scientists are already doing. It’s just not working as virus is unpredictable and it might infect some but not others.

The best way to find a solution is still try to understand how it acts on different types of people and if they have underlying previous conditions what changes it does, this takes time and I believe that’s the reason there isn’t any cure except by chance in a short time.

Are they already doing that? Is there somewhere I can find the statistics broken out by strain? Or even a list of identifiers of the known strains?

From what I've seen, it's been published in some news articles and such that there "might be" different strains. Haven't seen anything particularly solid yet.

Covid-19 is not mutating like other viruses, but it acts differently on different people, and very problematic for people with pre-existing conditions. Also in some cases again not proven it also infected heart muscles, now it’s not clear yet that it’s due to pneumonia or covid-19. In China they tried plasma from recovered patients and that also didn’t yield very good results. Also in some studies they find a correlation between BCG vaccine and low mortality (again not proven).

The issue with covid-19 is that it’s proving to be much harder to understand than other viruses in spite of not mutating like flu virus. Hopefully by more studies we can increase the chances of developing some cure or may be with so many efforts someone discover cure by chance.

Huh? The key premise of the article is that the SARS-CoV-2 virus is mutating.

Well it’s not mutating the virus they found in initial cases is still the same as the one at present in Patients in Europe and USA.

The premise of article is actually not novel, it’s the way vaccines are made. Smallpox way of developing vaccine in crude way without scientific understanding was done in the early years, now we have come very far.

This virus is really novel that’s the reason novel corona virus (covid-19). Scientists and research community are frantically searching for a vaccine or treatment plan to manage it. So far there is a very limited understanding. Hope can find some way to treat it, otherwise only solution left is relying on herd immunity.

The premise of using an attenuated virus as a vaccine is not novel, but the idea of using genome sequencing to find an attenuated strain and showing through epidemiology that it is safe does seem to be novel.

Even if it doesn’t pan out I think it is worth trying.

Perhaps start with these people:

https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia/mystery-of-long-...

Are they tracking that statistic? How many people who test positive later develop the symptoms?

Apparently 80% of those tested later get symptoms: https://twitter.com/TonyBurnetti/status/1246258723774963713

Yes it appears that most people infected eventually get some symptoms. What matters is if they end up in hospital in the ICU or not.

If we can find a strain that just makes you feel like you have a cold that you get over in a week or so then that is what we want.

*will settle for

I don't know if all [corona]viruses move this way but it seems covid illness evolution goes in waves. high symptoms, 2 days ok, high symptoms, 2 days ok, ... repeat a few cycles

It's pretty confusing when symptoms are below a critical threshold and you don't have a test yet.

Doing this stuff will take time, you can later remove sequences where the person later developed symptoms

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