[spuz]

> More than 10,000 novel variant sequences are currently discovered every week and human experts simply cannot cope with complex data at this scale

This is interesting. I think the Greek alphabet naming system would lead some people to believe the virus only mutates once every few months. Of course, the reality is that every infected individual will produce hundreds of mutations within their body. I think there's a gap in the public messaging here which if addressed could help people understand what the future direction of the pandemic might be.

[jdavis703]

This is the kind of education that needs to be done in high school during health and biology classes. We can’t hope the general public will become epidemiologically literate on 240 character tweets and 30-second television quotes. Heck, my old high school biology teacher remains a source of coronavirus FUD, so maybe that’s not even enough.

[dfsegoat]

I think most high school (USA) biology courses probably touch on the concept of viruses? This level of detail was certainly taught in high school Advanced Placement (AP) Biology when I took it many years ago.

[jdavis703]

I took both high school and university biology. We had two or three chapters on viruses in each textbook. But it was mostly discussed in terms of cellular and chemical levels. It was mostly abstracted from disease and epidemiology. Epidemiological concepts were barely taught, except for maybe a brief mention of exponential growth.

[DangitBobby]

We didn't learn much about bacteria and viruses, we learned much more about cells with human DNA. We definitely didn't touch on rapid evolution of microscopic life, even in courses where we did spend a little bit of time talking about viruses.

[spuz]

I believe I heard about this in this Radiolab episode from last year. It does a good of explaining how the virus replicates in the body and how it behaves differently if the patient is immunocompromised.

https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/articles/dispa...

[brianmcc]

I don't disagree with you, but I think the more root cause thing is - people should be more humble in listening to the advice and guidance of epidemiologists, and indeed other experts and specialists.

We as a society tacitly "outsource" the task of becoming an expert to a bunch of mostly smart and well-meaning folks, in all sorts of areas, because we cannot all know "everything" - and for some reason on vaccines and epidemiology great swathes of the population, including senior leaders politically, now choose to ignore their clear guidance on how best to act.

[mateo1]

Much of it is already on an optional biology module in my country. Of course we don't do anything quantitative about mutation rates etc, but at least you know what mRNA is instead of relying on politicized news pieces written by someone who doesn't even know what chirality is.

[carbocation]

Public messaging often includes the more extensive PANGO lineage (e.g., B.1.1.529 for Omicron). I think there is a limit to what can be conveyed in each news story.

[im3w1l]

Well to be classified as a variant it would have to be phenotypically different right? And also viable enough to infect a number of people.

[orintorynchus]

Well, there is a lot of overlapping nomenclature. Here by variant we understand any sample, which is not identical sequence-wise to sequences seen before. Most of the observed mutations are innocuous and do not lead to a potential new lineage (what better fits the definition of variant above). However, it is difficult to tell by eye - or even with the standard computational tools - if new mutation is (a) deleterious (harms the virus' capacity to spread), (b) neutral, or (c) fitness enhancing.