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"...but what does he really mean?" suspects. I have been wondering for a long time if there is any information out there about whether a covid vaccine busting mutation is most likely to evolve in the vaccinated, unvaccinated or neither. Does anybody have any insight. On my Google search the first article relates to chickens and a different virus .... https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-vaccines-can-drive-pathogens-to-evolve-201805 ...and in relation to that states... "The first vaccine was introduced in 1970, when the disease was killing entire flocks. It worked well, but within a decade, the vaccine mysteriously began to fail; outbreaks of Marek’s began erupting in flocks of inoculated chickens. A second vaccine was licensed in 1983 in the hopes of solving the problem, yet it, too, gradually stopped working. Today, the poultry industry is on its third vaccine. It still works, but Read and others are concerned it might one day fail, too – and no fourth-line vaccine is waiting. Worse, in recent decades, the virus has become more deadly."
"The team found that, over the course of their lives, the unvaccinated birds shed far more of the least virulent strains into the environment, whereas the vaccinated birds shed far more of the most virulent strains."
"If you don’t have these pathogens evolving in response to vaccines, then we really don’t understand natural selection."
So to reiterate this is not a call to not get vaccinated (all in my family are) it is however a thinking out load exercise in wondering what the most likely route to more deadly variants might be and a reiteration that nothing is entirely black or white wherever you might stand on vaccination.
Any links on this matter directly about covid would be appreciated.
"They break our legs and tell us to be grateful when they offer us crutches."
'Intensive farming may make the evolution and spread of harmful diseases easier. Many communicable animal diseases spread rapidly through densely spaced populations of animals and crowding makes genetic reassortment more likely. However, small family farms are more likely to introduce bird diseases and more frequent association with people into the mix, as happened in the 2009 flu pandemic' (from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intensive_animal_farming#Controversies_and_critici )
Coincidentally I was just listening to someone on 'Today' on Radio Four talking confidently about new vaccines for Covid-19 coming online with no problem, maybe that confidence can be down to humans being more adaptable than chickens. We are not bred intensively for food consumption, are we? are we...
At the risk of triggering the... on 09:04 - Sep 14 by WeWereZombies
'Intensive farming may make the evolution and spread of harmful diseases easier. Many communicable animal diseases spread rapidly through densely spaced populations of animals and crowding makes genetic reassortment more likely. However, small family farms are more likely to introduce bird diseases and more frequent association with people into the mix, as happened in the 2009 flu pandemic' (from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intensive_animal_farming#Controversies_and_critici )
Coincidentally I was just listening to someone on 'Today' on Radio Four talking confidently about new vaccines for Covid-19 coming online with no problem, maybe that confidence can be down to humans being more adaptable than chickens. We are not bred intensively for food consumption, are we? are we...
We are definitely intensely farmed! I have also been breathing in a lot of dust from the big heap of battery farmed chicken poo in a nearby field of late....at least it's not pangolins!
"They break our legs and tell us to be grateful when they offer us crutches."
At the risk of triggering the... on 09:19 - Sep 14 by BanksterDebtSlave
We are definitely intensely farmed! I have also been breathing in a lot of dust from the big heap of battery farmed chicken poo in a nearby field of late....at least it's not pangolins!
Although the point I am really trying to make is that vaccines are a vital part of our response to Covid-19 but they are not why we got into this mess in the first place. My contention is that 'modern life' is not only a bit rubbish but it is dangerous, we need to live more closely with nature but interfere with it less.
There is obviously not yet enough data on Covid itself in this regard. But it is worth considering other diseases such as Smallpox, Polio, Tuberculosis, Measles and even, to an extent, Influenza. Concerted vaccination campaigns over several decades have not resulted in more virulent and resistant versions, but conversely a massive reduction in prevelance and death rates (indeed, complete eradication in the case of the first of those*).
It is a mistake to think of mutations as deliberate and malevolent events** rather than what they are, which is random copying errors in the DNA/RNA sequence between succeding generations of an organism. A massively beneficial mutation may help promote survival, but they are extremely rare. Most will be irrelevent, or occasionally harmful. They cannot suddenly, on purpose, come up with a change which would, for example, sidestep a vaccine.
The thing with a virus is that reproduction is extremely rapid, every few days. Which means there is, in absolute terms, a higher chance of mutations occurring over time compared with a species like humans who only reproduce about every 20 to 30 years. But the percentage of those which will strengthen the organism is still tiny.
Even then, a "beneficial" mutation may not be passed on, due to chance factors (e.g. the host dies before infecting anyone else).
* And nearly so in some others - except in culturally anti-vax regions like rural northern Pakistan.
** That's entering the realms of science fiction, or theology. It takes an advanced outside intelligence to achieve, such as human selective breeding of plants and animals.
At the risk of triggering the... on 09:33 - Sep 14 by WeWereZombies
Although the point I am really trying to make is that vaccines are a vital part of our response to Covid-19 but they are not why we got into this mess in the first place. My contention is that 'modern life' is not only a bit rubbish but it is dangerous, we need to live more closely with nature but interfere with it less.
Completely agree and you are also hopeful that wherever future variants stem from that vaccines can be developed and rolled out quickly enough?
"They break our legs and tell us to be grateful when they offer us crutches."
At the risk of triggering the... on 09:40 - Sep 14 by Guthrum
There is obviously not yet enough data on Covid itself in this regard. But it is worth considering other diseases such as Smallpox, Polio, Tuberculosis, Measles and even, to an extent, Influenza. Concerted vaccination campaigns over several decades have not resulted in more virulent and resistant versions, but conversely a massive reduction in prevelance and death rates (indeed, complete eradication in the case of the first of those*).
It is a mistake to think of mutations as deliberate and malevolent events** rather than what they are, which is random copying errors in the DNA/RNA sequence between succeding generations of an organism. A massively beneficial mutation may help promote survival, but they are extremely rare. Most will be irrelevent, or occasionally harmful. They cannot suddenly, on purpose, come up with a change which would, for example, sidestep a vaccine.
The thing with a virus is that reproduction is extremely rapid, every few days. Which means there is, in absolute terms, a higher chance of mutations occurring over time compared with a species like humans who only reproduce about every 20 to 30 years. But the percentage of those which will strengthen the organism is still tiny.
Even then, a "beneficial" mutation may not be passed on, due to chance factors (e.g. the host dies before infecting anyone else).
* And nearly so in some others - except in culturally anti-vax regions like rural northern Pakistan.
** That's entering the realms of science fiction, or theology. It takes an advanced outside intelligence to achieve, such as human selective breeding of plants and animals.
Had the same thought about those other viruses. So you think that the vaccine status of the host will make no difference to possible mutations?
"They break our legs and tell us to be grateful when they offer us crutches."
At the risk of triggering the... on 09:40 - Sep 14 by Guthrum
There is obviously not yet enough data on Covid itself in this regard. But it is worth considering other diseases such as Smallpox, Polio, Tuberculosis, Measles and even, to an extent, Influenza. Concerted vaccination campaigns over several decades have not resulted in more virulent and resistant versions, but conversely a massive reduction in prevelance and death rates (indeed, complete eradication in the case of the first of those*).
It is a mistake to think of mutations as deliberate and malevolent events** rather than what they are, which is random copying errors in the DNA/RNA sequence between succeding generations of an organism. A massively beneficial mutation may help promote survival, but they are extremely rare. Most will be irrelevent, or occasionally harmful. They cannot suddenly, on purpose, come up with a change which would, for example, sidestep a vaccine.
The thing with a virus is that reproduction is extremely rapid, every few days. Which means there is, in absolute terms, a higher chance of mutations occurring over time compared with a species like humans who only reproduce about every 20 to 30 years. But the percentage of those which will strengthen the organism is still tiny.
Even then, a "beneficial" mutation may not be passed on, due to chance factors (e.g. the host dies before infecting anyone else).
* And nearly so in some others - except in culturally anti-vax regions like rural northern Pakistan.
** That's entering the realms of science fiction, or theology. It takes an advanced outside intelligence to achieve, such as human selective breeding of plants and animals.
One thought that struck me on reading your post was, true as the body of text was, there is a concern that a new virus emerges with more regularity in recent years (we've seen swine flu, bird flu and SARS as well as Covid-19 in the last couple of decades). So I Googled 'frequency of virus emergence' and got this interesting abstract:
You see, my concern is not the mutation of a known virus but the emergence of new ones - as the panic of the last eighteen months has been as much to do with the confusion around how to deal with Covid-19 as much as knowing what damage it does because it was new and only East Asia seemed to really have a clue (which was down to their experience of SARS.)
At the risk of triggering the... on 09:44 - Sep 14 by BanksterDebtSlave
Completely agree and you are also hopeful that wherever future variants stem from that vaccines can be developed and rolled out quickly enough?
One thing I am not hopeful about is my ability to apply myself to the task of drawing up a floorplan of the bothy where I took measurements weeks ago and which is much needed for the completion of next year's budget for work. Instead I am diving into abstracts of scientific papers...but it is interesting. Here is a more recent one than that posted on my response to Guthers:
It's relevant to Town supporters because it tells us what MICMAC actually stands for.
But to answer your question, in a inconclusive way, I suspect vaccines will be developed and rolled out quickly enough...for those in the rich World who want to be vaccinated, and not quickly enough for those with vaccine reticence or who are poor and at risk of infection. The emergence of a virus even more deadly than Covid-19 is, in my uninformed opinion, quite likely in the next decade and that thought confounds what hope I have for new vaccines.
At the risk of triggering the... on 09:57 - Sep 14 by WeWereZombies
One thought that struck me on reading your post was, true as the body of text was, there is a concern that a new virus emerges with more regularity in recent years (we've seen swine flu, bird flu and SARS as well as Covid-19 in the last couple of decades). So I Googled 'frequency of virus emergence' and got this interesting abstract:
You see, my concern is not the mutation of a known virus but the emergence of new ones - as the panic of the last eighteen months has been as much to do with the confusion around how to deal with Covid-19 as much as knowing what damage it does because it was new and only East Asia seemed to really have a clue (which was down to their experience of SARS.)
Which is an excellent point. The intrusion of people into the remoter areas of the planet, the conversion of wild habitats into farmland and the changing relationship between man and the environment (particularly in the developing world) are all going to increase the chances of previously unknown animal viruses making the jump to humanity.
The very "clean" lifestyles we have in the West ('kills 99.9% of all known germs' - plus the gobbling of antibiotics) is inevitably going to reduce our natural resistance to, if not viruses, then at least the secondary infections which are often the actual killers.
At the risk of triggering the... on 09:19 - Sep 14 by BanksterDebtSlave
We are definitely intensely farmed! I have also been breathing in a lot of dust from the big heap of battery farmed chicken poo in a nearby field of late....at least it's not pangolins!
I have settled on the view that there are several too many billion people on Earth.
It is amazing how much easier it is to watch the news once you embrace that 'truth'.
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At the risk of triggering the... on 10:38 - Sep 14 with 1742 views
At the risk of triggering the... on 09:54 - Sep 14 by BanksterDebtSlave
Had the same thought about those other viruses. So you think that the vaccine status of the host will make no difference to possible mutations?
Given it's down to random single events, if you are hosting the virus, there is a chance a mutation will occur. However, if your viral load and rate of shedding are reduced, that will drop the number of mutations and thus the already extremely low chance of producing one which strengthens the virus.
So far, an estimated couple of hundred million people worldwide have had Covid (sufficiently to get into official statistics - so probably several times that in all), which is going to represent at least hundreds of billions of viral reproduction events (maybe even an order of magnitute or two higher than that). So far, this has resulted in about five notably more unpleasant variants in 18 months*. Cut the worldwide viral load in a quarter by concerted vaccination, you might get one or two within the same period. Or none, as the virus finds it harder to transmit itself to new hosts.
* Vastly simplified. There are a large number of different lineages, some more virulent than others.
At the risk of triggering the... on 10:30 - Sep 14 by bluelagos
My understanding is it in the act of transmission that it mutates, not that it is mutating to make transmission.
And given that viruses are not sentient beings, I'd say not.
**Not an expert and one thing I've learned in the past 18 months is how little we know / how things change.
I would be wary, very wary, of bringing sentience in the debate. Some will argue that only animals are sentient and that plants are not, even then we have to consider what type of consciousness even an advanced animal such as a dog might have (and 'the problem of other minds' leads us to question whether we can even know if the consciousness another human being appears to exhibit can actually be the same as our own.)
When I checked Wikipedia last on the subject there was not even a definitive answer as to whether a virus was a living thing or not. And yet they emerge and mutate. And transmit, which is what causes us problems.
At the risk of triggering the... on 10:36 - Sep 14 by WD19
I have settled on the view that there are several too many billion people on Earth.
It is amazing how much easier it is to watch the news once you embrace that 'truth'.
I guess it depends on which 'news' you watch, I think that despite your short term confirmation bias you actually have many years of misery ahead of you:
Now that I have finally read to the end the second of the abstracts I have linked in previous posts I think I can give you a straight answer to the question, or at least quote someone else:
'2.6. Emergence of antibiotic resistance in livestock
The use of antibiotics is a significant concern in contemporary livestock production. Antibiotic usage in livestock is very common because they protect the animals from diseases and death due to infections. Repeated use of antibiotics causes elimination of a number of resident strains from the host’s gut, leading to the gradual emergence of antibiotic resistant pathogen strains. Natural host microbial communities and their diversities are important as they have a protective effect, as it suppresses the growth of resistant pathogenic microbial strains.
Since 1940, 40% of emerging infectious diseases identified in Asia documented the emergence of a new pattern of antimicrobial resistance. According to the WHO, excessive use of antibiotic drugs in human and animals result in a post-antibiotic era where pathogens of treatable diseases come back as more virulent. In addition to the overuse of antibiotic drugs, growing human population and climate changes contribute to antibiotic resistance. The routine prophylactic use of antibiotics in crowded, unhealthy, conditions may decrease animal infections, but at the same time the microbial diversity within the livestock may be reduced and antibiotic resistant superbugs will be selected. For example, Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus (MRSA) transmission from pigs to humans and Swine-associated MRSA can cause an invasive disease in human patients. So antibiotic resistance in livestock may act as catalysts for development of zoonoses, which can spread out of control.'
[edit] I know this is talking about antibiotics rather than vaccines, i.e. treatment rather than prevention, but I think the general thrust of these two paragraphs gives some guidance.
At the risk of triggering the... on 10:53 - Sep 14 by WeWereZombies
I guess it depends on which 'news' you watch, I think that despite your short term confirmation bias you actually have many years of misery ahead of you:
There is no point being miserable about it. The human face is screwed and it is going to take everything else with it. Collectively we are incapable of taking the action required......(One child quotas globally anyone? Banning of domestic pets?)
The fact we have come out of the worst Global Pandemic in a century with more people on the planet than we started with tells you everything you need to know.
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At the risk of triggering the... on 19:07 - Sep 14 with 1396 views
At the risk of triggering the... on 10:39 - Sep 14 by WeWereZombies
I would be wary, very wary, of bringing sentience in the debate. Some will argue that only animals are sentient and that plants are not, even then we have to consider what type of consciousness even an advanced animal such as a dog might have (and 'the problem of other minds' leads us to question whether we can even know if the consciousness another human being appears to exhibit can actually be the same as our own.)
When I checked Wikipedia last on the subject there was not even a definitive answer as to whether a virus was a living thing or not. And yet they emerge and mutate. And transmit, which is what causes us problems.
Sentience is the ability to perceive the self. Some animals have this, the layman way of describing this is if an animal can recognise itself in a mirror, it is sentient, if it thinks it's another animal, it's not sentient. Dogs, horses, sheep, monkeys, parrots, dolphins, and many others, have shown the ability to perceive itself, but not all animals in those species have the same level of sentience.
Plants and trees are alive, they are unlikely to have sentience, but they have the ability to communicate in limited ways, this is how they defend themselves from pathogens and pests but it's a very slow process which shows it's an evolutionary process akin to Darwin's theory. They can pass genetic information to other living plants of their species, which would be the human equivalent of vaccination, to slow and halt the natural threats.
A virus is not a living organism because it cannot reproduce by itself, they need to enter a living cell to do that, they cannot live without being in a living cell.
What is the use of knowing about everything else, when you do not yet know who you are.
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At the risk of triggering the... on 19:48 - Sep 14 with 1324 views
At the risk of triggering the... on 10:30 - Sep 14 by bluelagos
My understanding is it in the act of transmission that it mutates, not that it is mutating to make transmission.
And given that viruses are not sentient beings, I'd say not.
**Not an expert and one thing I've learned in the past 18 months is how little we know / how things change.
That's not quite correct. Mutation can occur whenever a virus replicates, which in an individual carrying the covid virus happens probably millions of times per day. So there is a possibility that within one individual, mutations can occur and some of the daughter viruses will be genetically different from the parent. As Guthrum stated above, some mutations will confer a disadvantage, so those will probably die out very quickly. Some may have a neutral effect. very occasionally, the daughter will have a genetic advantage and will replicate quickly and be exhaled and transmitted to others. Mutations themselves are incredibly rare, and this is multiplied by the also extremely rare chance that the mutation is advantageous to the virus, hence why new variants of Covid are so rare.
The interesting (to me) exception is when a virus crosses the species barrier, i.e. bird flu that transmits to dogs, cats or humans. Normally, the viruses are so well adapted to the hosts (e.g. birds) that they would not survive in a different species. So it may be that it takes a combination of a successful mutation coupled with transmission to a different species so that it mutates just as it lands in the airway of a different host species for which it is well adapted. But I'm going beyond my knowledge - this is real expert virologist stuff, and maybe no one knows....
At the risk of triggering the... on 19:07 - Sep 14 by Bluedicea
Sentience is the ability to perceive the self. Some animals have this, the layman way of describing this is if an animal can recognise itself in a mirror, it is sentient, if it thinks it's another animal, it's not sentient. Dogs, horses, sheep, monkeys, parrots, dolphins, and many others, have shown the ability to perceive itself, but not all animals in those species have the same level of sentience.
Plants and trees are alive, they are unlikely to have sentience, but they have the ability to communicate in limited ways, this is how they defend themselves from pathogens and pests but it's a very slow process which shows it's an evolutionary process akin to Darwin's theory. They can pass genetic information to other living plants of their species, which would be the human equivalent of vaccination, to slow and halt the natural threats.
A virus is not a living organism because it cannot reproduce by itself, they need to enter a living cell to do that, they cannot live without being in a living cell.
I think the only definite thing we can say is that the jury is still out:
Scientists thought the world was flat til it was proved otherwise, the debate raged over 1000 years, and still some don't believe it.
By the current definition in science, what I said is right. If that definition changes in time due to further analysis then sure.
Personally I believe that they are a form of life, just not recognised as such yet. The problem is we don't have a way to measure everything. Like the argument of trees having sentience, they possibly could but as it would be so vastly different from what we are used to, we have no idea how to measure it or even where to start. There is far more we don't understand about some simple things, than we do know, we just don't really know yet how much we don't know.
[Post edited 14 Sep 2021 22:41]
What is the use of knowing about everything else, when you do not yet know who you are.
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