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Re: Coronavirus - Numbers and Statistics

The home for all non-political Coronavirus (Covid-19) discussions on The Lemon Fool
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This is the home for all non-political Coronavirus (Covid-19) discussions on The Lemon Fool
odysseus2000
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Re: Coronavirus - Numbers and Statistics

#476381

Postby odysseus2000 » January 26th, 2022, 7:25 pm

jfgw wrote:
odysseus2000 wrote:The historical evidence is that very few (none?) virus are 100% lethal to an entire species.

We know this as humans have survived as a species many previous virus.

You could pick any extant species and say the same ;)


Julian F. G. W.


There have been many mass extinctions in the geological record, that have been traced to a newly emerged predator (often humans in recent history) & many others due to objects from space causing extreme climate change, but are there any that can be unambiguously traced to a virus?

Regards,

GrahamPlatt
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Re: Coronavirus - Numbers and Statistics

#476385

Postby GrahamPlatt » January 26th, 2022, 7:53 pm

Something I read a while (nearly 15 years!) ago:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007 ... s-surprise

Darwin’s Surprise
Why are evolutionary biologists bringing back extinct deadly viruses?

“When the sequence of the human genome was fully mapped, in 2003, researchers also discovered something they had not anticipated: our bodies are littered with the shards of such retroviruses, fragments of the chemical code from which all genetic material is made. It takes less than two per cent of our genome to create all the proteins necessary for us to live. Eight per cent, however, is composed of broken and disabled retroviruses, which, millions of years ago, managed to embed themselves in the DNA of our ancestors. They are called endogenous retroviruses, because once they infect the DNA of a species they become part of that species”

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Re: Coronavirus - Numbers and Statistics

#476394

Postby Hallucigenia » January 26th, 2022, 9:16 pm

odysseus2000 wrote: are there any that can be unambiguously traced to a virus?


It's always hard, because of the nature of viruses not leaving any record in the fossil record. But if you widen it out to other pathogens like fungi, they reckon chytridiomycosis has wiped out 200 species of amphibians :

https://cwhl.vet.cornell.edu/disease/chytridiomycosis

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Re: Coronavirus - Numbers and Statistics

#476414

Postby 9873210 » January 26th, 2022, 10:14 pm

odysseus2000 wrote:
There have been many mass extinctions in the geological record, that have been traced to a newly emerged predator (often humans in recent history) & many others due to objects from space causing extreme climate change, but are there any that can be unambiguously traced to a virus?

Regards,


You've gone from "kills a few individuals" to "kills most individuals" to "kills an entire species" to "kills entire genera and families". You may have set a new world's record in raising the bar.

Pathogens tend to be at least a little selective so are unlikely to cause true mass extinctions. Further it is much easier for a pathogen to cause extinction in a species if it has a large reservoir of other species where it is not fatal so that it persists as the population density of the doomed species declines. Without that isolated populations may survive and rebound after the pathogen dies out.

Never-the-less birdpox is believed to be a significant factor in the extinction of several Hawai'ian birds.

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Re: Coronavirus - Numbers and Statistics

#476416

Postby odysseus2000 » January 26th, 2022, 10:26 pm

Hallucigenia wrote:
odysseus2000 wrote: are there any that can be unambiguously traced to a virus?


It's always hard, because of the nature of viruses not leaving any record in the fossil record. But if you widen it out to other pathogens like fungi, they reckon chytridiomycosis has wiped out 200 species of amphibians :

https://cwhl.vet.cornell.edu/disease/chytridiomycosis


But as mentioned earlier in the thread there is evidence in the dna of humans of many interactions with virus & as we are still here is evidence of the resilience of humans.

Regards,

servodude
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Re: Coronavirus - Numbers and Statistics

#476418

Postby servodude » January 26th, 2022, 10:27 pm

Hallucigenia wrote:
odysseus2000 wrote: are there any that can be unambiguously traced to a virus?


It's always hard, because of the nature of viruses not leaving any record in the fossil record. But if you widen it out to other pathogens like fungi, they reckon chytridiomycosis has wiped out 200 species of amphibians :

https://cwhl.vet.cornell.edu/disease/chytridiomycosis


I was trying to remember where I had heard of fungus doing a number on a species. Then I thought that's bananas! ;)

It's the cordyceps we've got to watch out for because zombies!

-sd

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Re: Coronavirus - Numbers and Statistics

#476425

Postby Hallucigenia » January 26th, 2022, 11:18 pm

odysseus2000 wrote:But as mentioned earlier in the thread there is evidence in the dna of humans of many interactions with virus & as we are still here is evidence of the resilience of humans.


We're resilient - but not invincible. Native Americans had had many interactions with viruses, yet it didn't stop them getting wiped out by smallpox and syphilis. Europeans had had many interactions with pathogens, but it didn't stop 30-60% of them getting wiped out by the Black Death.

It is the height of arrogance to think we're virus-proof, it's like being a dinosaur in the late Cretaceous thinking "well, us dinosaurs have been around for 175 million years, we're pretty resilient, we'll be around forever. Oooh - what's that light in the sky......?"

Retroviruses are fun, arguably their continued presence in our genomes represents an ongoing infection, which costs us in DNA replication. But that's another subject.

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Re: Coronavirus - Numbers and Statistics

#476435

Postby odysseus2000 » January 27th, 2022, 12:53 am

Hallucigenia wrote:
odysseus2000 wrote:But as mentioned earlier in the thread there is evidence in the dna of humans of many interactions with virus & as we are still here is evidence of the resilience of humans.


We're resilient - but not invincible. Native Americans had had many interactions with viruses, yet it didn't stop them getting wiped out by smallpox and syphilis. Europeans had had many interactions with pathogens, but it didn't stop 30-60% of them getting wiped out by the Black Death.

It is the height of arrogance to think we're virus-proof, it's like being a dinosaur in the late Cretaceous thinking "well, us dinosaurs have been around for 175 million years, we're pretty resilient, we'll be around forever. Oooh - what's that light in the sky......?"

Retroviruses are fun, arguably their continued presence in our genomes represents an ongoing infection, which costs us in DNA replication. But that's another subject.


Yes, but it's the height of pessimism to shut down everyone's life because of a virus that is now being mastered. Had the shut downs happened as the pandemic spread they might have slowed things down, but the situation is now imho very different & it's clear as I see it, that the risks for people with potential dangerous susceptibility need to be addressed more than a complete shut down, with most at risk status being given enhanced help & those without being encouraged to behave sensibly.

This is sort of what is happening in the UK, whereas in some other countries draconian measures are being forced on the population without any obvious imho great improvement in out comes.

I certainly don't want covid so I steer clear of situations that I fear with lots of people and I take vitamin D & the most varied diet I can having had blood test results showing I was low on iron & b12 from being lazy & not eating well. I also know that there are lots of other things that I do which carry risk & I address these dangers with as much ppe as I can & by attempting to work safely.

At the back of my mind is the feeling that if I do catch covid that anti virals if the medics will communicate with me will likely help. My biggest fear is that I have another episode like last March when 13 steps left me gasping for breath & I eventually got a phone call from a medic about 3 weeks later when I had recovered.

One can go into all manner of theory & risk/reward analysis, but if you are sick & can't get help none of it matters.

This is becoming a hobby horse of mine, but I don't think the current medical system is fit for the 21st century. Medics can not imho offer what is needed. I believe an AI based system with implanted sensors and where ones medical history is stored on a block chain, with appropriate safeguards against illegal access, would be better. The system would know you, be upto date with your medical history & the latest medical knowledge & in many cases be able to treat someone at home. What we have now where information is asked dozens of times, different medics attend & the hospitals are places of increased infection belongs in the dustbin of history. I expect this to begin to happen in the next few years.

Regards,

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Re: Coronavirus - Numbers and Statistics

#476460

Postby jfgw » January 27th, 2022, 9:16 am

odysseus2000 wrote:But as mentioned earlier in the thread there is evidence in the dna of humans of many interactions with virus & as we are still here is evidence of the resilience of humans.


Until...

Out of the 19 Homos listed here, we are the only ones left. Did a virus wipe out any of these?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo#List_of_lineages


Julian F. G. W.

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Re: Coronavirus - Numbers and Statistics

#476494

Postby odysseus2000 » January 27th, 2022, 10:48 am

jfgw wrote:
odysseus2000 wrote:But as mentioned earlier in the thread there is evidence in the dna of humans of many interactions with virus & as we are still here is evidence of the resilience of humans.


Until...

Out of the 19 Homos listed here, we are the only ones left. Did a virus wipe out any of these?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo#List_of_lineages


Julian F. G. W.


This has been a recurring question. At one point folk were saying that humans wiped out all the competing species. Now the thesis seems to be that the other species became hybrids with humans with Neanderthal dna being found in humans assuming folk do understand the dna.

The other aspect about virus is that if they kill all their hosts they kill themselves, so to thrive as a virus killing one’s host to extinction is not a survival strategy.

Regards,

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Re: Coronavirus - Numbers and Statistics

#476512

Postby servodude » January 27th, 2022, 11:31 am

odysseus2000 wrote:The other aspect about virus is that if they kill all their hosts they kill themselves, so to thrive as a virus killing one’s host to extinction is not a survival strategy


So what?
They are not strategic things - they don't think

-sd

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Re: Coronavirus - Numbers and Statistics

#476520

Postby 9873210 » January 27th, 2022, 11:44 am

odysseus2000 wrote:
The other aspect about virus is that if they kill all their hosts they kill themselves, so to thrive as a virus killing one’s host to extinction is not a survival strategy.

Regards,

Viruses do not have strategies. Evolution does not have forethought.

The way evolution gets rid of viruses that would kill off their hosts is by killing off their hosts. This is no consolation to the host and does not prevent other viruses from taking the same path.

The working mechanism of evolution is death on a staggering scale.

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Re: Coronavirus - Numbers and Statistics

#476555

Postby TUK020 » January 27th, 2022, 1:22 pm

servodude wrote:
Hallucigenia wrote:
odysseus2000 wrote: are there any that can be unambiguously traced to a virus?


It's always hard, because of the nature of viruses not leaving any record in the fossil record. But if you widen it out to other pathogens like fungi, they reckon chytridiomycosis has wiped out 200 species of amphibians :

https://cwhl.vet.cornell.edu/disease/chytridiomycosis


I was trying to remember where I had heard of fungus doing a number on a species. Then I thought that's bananas! ;)

It's the cordyceps we've got to watch out for because zombies!

-sd

Bananas are a rather specific case.
Most species can recover from attack by new pathogens because of genetic diversity within the species - some individuals resist the pathogens better, and form the core of the new population.
Bananas are sterile mutations from the plantain family, which have been propagated by human intervention because they taste good. The reason the banana industry gets hammered periodically by disease is that the whole industry is based on something like 10 genetic individuals.
Similar sort of thing as to why Dutch Elm Disease created such havoc. Elm trees tend to propagate by underground suckers forming a new tree. This means that entire forests tend to be single genetic individuals. When one tree goes under to a new pathogen, the entire forest tends to go under.

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Re: Coronavirus - Numbers and Statistics

#476560

Postby odysseus2000 » January 27th, 2022, 1:33 pm

9873210 wrote:
odysseus2000 wrote:
The other aspect about virus is that if they kill all their hosts they kill themselves, so to thrive as a virus killing one’s host to extinction is not a survival strategy.

Regards,

Viruses do not have strategies. Evolution does not have forethought.

The way evolution gets rid of viruses that would kill off their hosts is by killing off their hosts. This is no consolation to the host and does not prevent other viruses from taking the same path.

The working mechanism of evolution is death on a staggering scale.


If you are saying that virus don't have intelligence & don't plan, then yes I agree.

But effectively they do as if a virus kills all its hosts then it is gone, so the successful virus must not kill all its hosts.

We know that there are lots of virus so the effective intelligence of a virus is not to kill all its hosts.

Scientists often have a pessimsum as they see how what ever it is they are working on is fragile & could be destroyed, failing to see the overall picture that things are extraordinarily resilient & that is before one factors in twenty first century technology which is capable of both making things very much better or very much worse.

Regards,

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Re: Coronavirus - Numbers and Statistics

#476580

Postby jfgw » January 27th, 2022, 2:21 pm

odysseus2000 wrote:But effectively they do as if a virus kills all its hosts then it is gone, so the successful virus must not kill all its hosts.

A virus that infects more than one species could wipe one out completely while still being able to spread, however.


Julian F. G. W.

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Re: Coronavirus - Numbers and Statistics

#476608

Postby odysseus2000 » January 27th, 2022, 4:31 pm

jfgw wrote:
odysseus2000 wrote:But effectively they do as if a virus kills all its hosts then it is gone, so the successful virus must not kill all its hosts.

A virus that infects more than one species could wipe one out completely while still being able to spread, however.


Julian F. G. W.


Do you have any examples of this happening?

Regards,

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Re: Coronavirus - Numbers and Statistics

#476623

Postby jfgw » January 27th, 2022, 4:53 pm

odysseus2000 wrote:Do you have any examples of this happening?


No, it is speculation. I don't know how such an event would be detected unless it was within recorded history.

A virus carried by grey squirrels can kill red squirrels and is one factor in the huge reduction in the latter's population.


Julian F. G. W.

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Re: Coronavirus - Numbers and Statistics

#476677

Postby servodude » January 27th, 2022, 8:14 pm

odysseus2000 wrote:
9873210 wrote:
odysseus2000 wrote:
The other aspect about virus is that if they kill all their hosts they kill themselves, so to thrive as a virus killing one’s host to extinction is not a survival strategy.

Regards,

Viruses do not have strategies. Evolution does not have forethought.

The way evolution gets rid of viruses that would kill off their hosts is by killing off their hosts. This is no consolation to the host and does not prevent other viruses from taking the same path.

The working mechanism of evolution is death on a staggering scale.


If you are saying that virus don't have intelligence & don't plan, then yes I agree.

But effectively they do as if a virus kills all its hosts then it is gone, so the successful virus must not kill all its hosts.



No they don't
There is no intent, no decision, no thinking, no caring, no f***s given if they replicate or not

Viruses just do their thing and that's it

What that thing is happens by random - either mistakes in replication or picking up other bits of code

If you're suggesting the idea of even "effective" intelligence you really have the wrong end of the stick; which is easy enough to do (there's been loads of specious and ill-informed coverage of this kind of thing over the years - conflation of evolutionary pressure with direction is common)

Grab a copy of GALib or a python tool kit for modelling of generations of genetic code and simulate the bejesus out of this
- it should soon start to make sense

-sd

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Re: Coronavirus - Numbers and Statistics

#476690

Postby 9873210 » January 27th, 2022, 8:41 pm

odysseus2000 wrote:
jfgw wrote:
odysseus2000 wrote:But effectively they do as if a virus kills all its hosts then it is gone, so the successful virus must not kill all its hosts.

A virus that infects more than one species could wipe one out completely while still being able to spread, however.


Julian F. G. W.


Do you have any examples of this happening?

Regards,


Birdpox in Hawai'i.

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Re: Coronavirus - Numbers and Statistics

#476694

Postby 9873210 » January 27th, 2022, 8:58 pm

odysseus2000 wrote:
9873210 wrote:
odysseus2000 wrote:
The other aspect about virus is that if they kill all their hosts they kill themselves, so to thrive as a virus killing one’s host to extinction is not a survival strategy.

Regards,

Viruses do not have strategies. Evolution does not have forethought.

The way evolution gets rid of viruses that would kill off their hosts is by killing off their hosts. This is no consolation to the host and does not prevent other viruses from taking the same path.

The working mechanism of evolution is death on a staggering scale.


If you are saying that virus don't have intelligence & don't plan, then yes I agree.

But effectively they do as if a virus kills all its hosts then it is gone, so the successful virus must not kill all its hosts.

We know that there are lots of virus so the effective intelligence of a virus is not to kill all its hosts.

Scientists often have a pessimsum as they see how what ever it is they are working on is fragile & could be destroyed, failing to see the overall picture that things are extraordinarily resilient & that is before one factors in twenty first century technology which is capable of both making things very much better or very much worse.

Regards,


There is no gene for "kills all the hosts" that can be selected against. There's a bunch of genes for proteins that do different things in different environments, when a virus jumps a species barrier all bets are off.

If you have an airborne virus with a latency like rabies or HIV the entire population could be dead men walking before we know it exists.

Also killing off all hosts is an unreasonably high bar. A virus that kills 30% of its hosts or 0.1% of its hosts can cause a great deal of death and misery and persist for generations.

Twenty first century technology can only do some good if we use it. Putting it on the shelf and admiring it does nothing.


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