Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by nfc 2242 days ago
This all depends on so many factors and there are still so many things that we don't know that I'm skeptical of people claiming they know how unlikely it is to happen. What is the degree of confidence of those virologists on their predictions?, what does highly unlikely mean in probabilities?. If you can share your sources I'd be happy to read them

From my understanding. A decrease of the virulence is the most likely outcome, however it's also possible (just not as likely) that a future strain could be both more deadly and have R0 > 1 (with R0 obviously depending of how we behave). We probably will not have a worse wave in the future but we should think about how to prepare for it.
1 comments
SpicyLemonZest 2242 days ago
It's not that there's a specific, quantified prediction for why it won't happen. There are countless endemic viruses in widespread circulation, including multiple other coronaviruses - they generally don't evolve to become more deadly, and there's no specific reason to believe this virus would.
link
nfc 2242 days ago
> they generally don't evolve to become more deadly

That's a very important point and one that makes me agree with you in that it'll probably won't happen. This is because in most cases a virus reduces its R0 when its deadliness increases.

What I'm trying to point out is that "unlikely" is not impossible and since the stakes are high we should at least think seriously how likely the other possibility is.

For example we could think that for a virus like SARS-CoV-2 with asymptomatic contagion it's possible to think that a more deadly strain could maintain an R0 above 1 (because people pass it before becoming very ill). I talked more about this in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23025899 to which I received a very thoughtful answer.

Again that does not mean that it will happen just that it could, and I believe we should encourage an informed discussion about this possibility

link
VectorLock 2242 days ago
I'm not an epidemiologist by any stretch of the imagination but I would think for a virus with a long incubation time and asymptomatic spreading the R0 would be similar between the infected dying and simply recovering and their immune system eliminating the virus, other than the reduction in total population.
link
nfc 2242 days ago
That's exactly the point I was trying to make
link