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by sdsaga12
1415 days ago
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Isn't this true of all new strains of all contagious pathogens? They are constantly undergoing change. We estimate low probability that mutated viruses or bacteria descended from strains we are familiar with will have dramatically more harmful long-term effects, but we don't actually know for certain that any given year's new strains won't have very different risk profiles until much later. We can make probabilistic models based on historical data, but they are unavoidably vulnerable to underestimating the risk of black swan events. One could argue that certain features of covid make it riskier with regard to long-term effects, but that is not a proposition that is well developed in the public conversation, especially by proponents of the zoonosis hypothesis. The lab origin hypothesis with its accompanying assumptions of serial passage and direct gene modification would in my eyes strengthen the case that covid's long-term effects were less likely to conform to historical data on other viral infections, though interestingly the intersection of those who find the lab origin more convincing with those who have serious concerns about long-term harms is a pretty small set. |
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Yes. The distinguishing factor there is that most new strains do not kill millions of people within the first year or two of discovery. Compare, for example, the H1N1 variant that caused the 2009 flu pandemic, which killed "only" around 300,000 people (based on best excess death estimates).
> One could argue that certain features of covid make it riskier with regard to long-term effects, but that is not a proposition that is well developed in the public conversation, especially by proponents of the zoonosis hypothesis.
This has long been an established part of the messaging: we're more or less confident that short term effects to young, otherwise healthy individuals are minor. The guidance has still been to avoid infection, because we're not confident that mild short term guarantee or protect against serious long term effects. Chickenpox (and subsequently shingles) exemplify this.
I understand the intuition that a non-zoonotic origin would lend credence to the possibility of long term risks, but I don't think the epidemiology actually supports the intuition: my understanding is that viruses that jump the species gap tend to have higher variability in terms of their harm to the new species.