Which was projected to be the trajectory from the start. Transmissible diseases usually mutate to be less deadly over time, because killing the host is a bad reproduction strategy. Spanish Flu is still here today, it's just not crazy deadly anymore.
It's just not guaranteed to be monotonic (particular strains can bump lethality upwards), and it doesn't help the people who die early on to the stronger strains, especially with an overloaded medical system.
Like, we don't have hospitals overflowing into makeshift tent farms outside with freezer trucks used to handle the overload of bodies until the crematoriums can get around to them anymore, either. It's definitely trended towards reduced lethality over time.
> Transmissible diseases usually mutate to be less deadly over time, because killing the host is a bad reproduction strategy.
Incorrect. This virus has already spread by the time you're dying in the hospital and it doesn't "care" if you die or not. If it could spread more effectively during the transmissible period of the disease, while more effectively murdering you on the tail end, it'll murder you more, no problem.
The Delta wave was a good example of the virus mutating to become both more transmissible and lethal, quite successfully from its perspective.
The mechanism for waning virulence is that we've got T-cells which recognize conserved T-cell epitopes so the human race has some level of relatively permanent immunity now against the novel virus, and because immunity to neutralizing antibodies causes the virus to mutate and it is always competing with the immunity to its past self and that has a cost.
If you take into account the lifecycle of HIV, it can take 2-15 years to develop stage 3. (Stage 3 is the symptomatic part. People on medication may never reach stage 3.) As such, a transmission generation even of SARS-CoV-2 is going to be on the order of days. HIV can be on the order of years.
So, there are different evolutionary pressures. If we find out that Covid is actually latent in all of us years later (unlikely because we would have likely seen it with SARS-1 or MERS), then all bets would be off.
This makes sense. Would also make sense why AIDS hasn't evolved to become less deadly, but it also brings up that covid hasn't had a bottleneck in terms of transmission. The main reason why one strain has replaced another has been that more recent strains are more transmissible. Delta was more deadly (and transmissible) than alpha, beta & the original strain, and came later for instance. I think we got lucky with omicron, which evolved from alpha if i'm not mistaken.
Yes. The latest variants are less deadly. There is a pretty good reason for that. If the infected lives longer it has a higher chance of a successful transmission.
What are you basing this on?
Looks like deaths peaked in 2004, but more people in Africa are receiving treatment. Without treatment the avg life expectancy seems to be 11 years, and doesn't look like that's changed.
I imagine we won't know because of HIV's long life in the body, properly medicated. No one is willing to run a study to determine that, as it essentially sentences the control group to death.
From what I read, for both Covid and Influenza, a certain percentage have lingering symptoms, but you cant say they are similar because some symptoms are much more life altering that others. A nagging cough is not the same as brain fog, for example. The life altering symptoms "seem" to be much worse with Covid.
In terms of genetics and symptoms, SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) is more similar to other common cold coronaviruses such as HCoV-OC43. It has very little in common with influenza.
I wouldn't. For me, covid was just a couple of days of fever with no other symptoms. Strange feeling to get fever isolated like that. But I'd take
it multiple times over the typical knocked out for a week flu with multiple flavours of suffering. That said, I did have covid vaccine up front.
I didn't take the vaccine (I decided it didn't make sense for me) and have had covid twice. Once was likely Beta, the other likely Omicron.
The first time around sucked. It was basically a very bad flu for about five days. I caught it on a trip to southern Mississippi, and it didn't help that I had to drive >10 hours back home without stopping anywhere that I might spread it. I ordered medicine, food, and supplies for contactless delivery and drove it nonstop.
The second time I only knew it was covid because I was testing every time I had an inkling that I might have gotten it. I had a very mild fever and a runny nose for two days and nothing else. I isolated myself in my home office and managed to keep anyone else in my family from getting it, too.
Everything I've experienced, heard, or read strongly indicates that each round is significantly less bad than the last.
I've had covid 3 times. Would rather get it 3 more times than get the flu a single time. Other than paranoia about having it, the actual symptoms have been a mild to bad cold for all my family/friends.
Not sure why you’re downvoted. It’s not significantly more lethal at this point than seasonal flu. The only difference to the population that I see is that vaccines for COVID have less efficacy than those for influenza.
The big concern with covid is long covid which affects around 5% of people who got covid. Thats what scares me. When I got covid it were only 2-3 bad days and the rest was like a normal flu but I noticed it took me roughly 3 more weeks to feel 100% like I did before, mostly fitness and stamina.
I've never recovered. I permanently lost the ability to taste certain things and can literally get 10 hours of sleep the night before and feel exhausted by noon.
I look forward to people who pretend that it's the same as the flu catching it for themselves so that they can enjoy this "no big deal."
Sorry. I have a brilliant, extremely driven friend who did undergrad at an ivy. After getting covid, She had to drop out of her grad school program and her new life is a shell compared to what it used to be like. 2 years later, and there's a tiny fraction of improvement which she attributes to extreme rest. I forward her literature about emerging LC treatments and mechanisms of which her physicians are laughably ignorant.
Sorry that you're suffering this way. It's infuriating to me that people downplay Covid infections when the risk of suffering from long Covid effects is very real.
> The big concern with covid is long covid which affects around 5% of people who got covid.
Where did you get 5%?
Last I saw you have a 20% chance of long covid, but it seems that was with older variants.
The thing that scares me is:
> up to two years after infection, at an elevated risk for many long COVID-related conditions including diabetes, lung problems, fatigue, blood clots and disorders affecting the gastrointestinal and musculoskeletal systems.
My concern is that there isn't going to be much research on a proper vaccine since the Pharma companies are making money hand over fist on this half-assed one currently available.
It was good when it came out, but based on it's effectiveness, it seems more of a stop-gap than a proper vaccine.
“There were 8996 hospitalizations (538 deaths [5.98%] within 30 days) for COVID-19 and 2403 hospitalizations (76 deaths [3.16%]) for seasonal influenza,”
“Compared with hospitalization for influenza, hospitalization for COVID-19 was associated with a higher risk of death (hazard ratio, 1.61 [95% CI, 1.29-2.02]).”
> The only difference to the population that I see is that vaccines for COVID have less efficacy than those for influenza.
So far COVID vaccines seem to confer protection for longer than flu ones, and the initial protection is generally higher.
Not sure if it's your case, but people often forget that every year there's a new flu shot per hemisphere, and its effectiveness generally hovers at around 40-60%.
The difference is that flu vaccines actually prevent infection in many cases, whereas COVID vaccines do not prevent them, but merely lessen the symptoms and risk of hospitalization.
> The difference is that flu vaccines actually prevent infection in many cases
OK
> whereas COVID vaccines do not prevent them, but merely lessen the symptoms and risk of hospitalization.
Is this something I can read on a peer reviewed study, or is it yet another creative definition of what "infection", "vaccine" or "symptom" really means?
> Irrespective of vaccination and/or prior natural infection, SARS-CoV-2 breakthrough infections and reinfections remained highly infectious and were responsible for 80% of transmission observed in the study population, which has high levels of both prior infection and vaccination. This observation underscores that vaccination and prevalent naturally acquired immunity alone will not eliminate risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection, especially in higher-risk settings, such as prisons.
