I haven't had a chance to watch the video you posted yet, so I don't know how they talk about the two "variants", but I will talk about that briefly. (I'm not really sure what word to use when describing the two)
I've read different things over the past few days on that. Here is one interpretation:
https://www.livescience.com/coronavirus-mutations.html
I don't think there is anything clear enough to know much about it. I see a lot of varied interpretations over it. Some scientists even want that study/paper to be retracted.
https://www.latimes.com/science/story/2020-03-05/chinese-scientists-say-second-coronavirus-strain-more-dangerous
I'll include that Los Angeles Times article at the bottom for those that can't view it. (I have JavaScript turned off to view their articles)
I'll include that Los Angeles Times article, but I don't like the headline, "Here's why Chinese scientists say there's a second, more dangerous coronavirus strain". That more aggressive version might be less prevalent now, but that's not certain. And it's not certain there is that much difference anyway. I like that the article presents the conflicting view later on, but the headline is designed to drive clicks.
Viruses mutate. Depending on what you read you might get an incorrect impression on whether a "variant" is weaker or stronger and whether it is more or less prevalent.
There's so much information being put out about the coronavirus. It's conflicting.
I've been curious how long it lasts on surfaces that aren't treated. I've heard a few hours to 9 days. That's based on other coronaviruses and the amount of times depends on such things as the surface we are talking about. That's not a very helpful range.
There's various articles that have sometimes information information about various things, but some of it can also be misleading. (such as on the death rate being lower or higher) I hesitate to post some of it because I don't want people getting the wrong idea. Things are based on interpretation of the facts as we know them now. If there is something that makes someone less prepared because something seems like better news, I don't want them to think that when that is just one interpretation. Or based on possibly not enough evidence. Or the virus mutates more. Or we just learn more about it.
I think the death rate and rate of spread might be country dependent. If a country doesn't do enough to slow the spread, like having people stay home, a lot more people will likely be infected. And if they don't slow the spread enough, hospitals would be more likely to be overwhelmed and more people die because they can't get as good of care. I don't know if other countries have nursing homes to the extent we do. In some countries older relatives are more likely to stay at home. While you risk giving it to that older person if other people in the household get it because they are still going out, a nursing home might be far more dangerous when a lot of older people are close together. I think nursing homes in this country are going to have a tremendous problem. We already saw how the first one has gone.
This was a CNN update about that first nursing home:
"70 Life Care Center employees show symptoms of coronavirus, spokesperson says
From CNN's Melissa Alonso
Seventy employees at the Life Care Center in Kirkland, Washington, are showing symptoms of novel coronavirus, according to Tim Killian, spokesperson for the facility.
There were 180 staff members employed at Life Care Center as of February 19.
Employees showing symptoms have been asked not to return to work, Killian said at a briefing on Saturday.
There were 120 residents at the facility on February 19, 54 residents have since been transferred to various hospitals, Killian said.
All current residents are confined to their rooms, Killian added.
On Thursday, the facility received 45 coronavirus tests, the results of which are still pending, according to Killian."
That's just one nursing home and they haven't even moved people out of it. It's absurd. The response to that and cruise ships so far has been abysmal. On the cruise ship crew are still obviously preparing meals since they aren't at port yet, and there is no indication when that might happen. Everything about the response so far has been terrible.
Meanwhile at an NBA game tonight in San Francisco, where the city had previously recommended Friday that "non-essential large gatherings should be canceled or postponed", which included sporting events, the game will go on with crowds.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/07/us/golden-state-warriors-nba-coronavirus-trnd/
I saw that earlier on CNN and they showed the sign that was on the doors saying you absolved the arena and maybe the team and NBA of any responsibility if you got the coronavirus there. I can't find the message online at the moment. So while some places are taking things seriously, some places are not.
Los Angeles Times
Here's why Chinese scientists say there's a second, more dangerous coronavirus strain
By MELISSA HEALYSTAFF
MARCH 5, 2020
The global outbreak that has sickened nearly 100,000 people across six continents may actually be fueled by two variants of the same coronavirus: one older and less aggressive and a newer version whose mutations may have made it more contagious and more deadly, according to a controversial new study.
Chinese scientists who compared the genetic sequences of 103 viral samples from patients infected with COVID-19 said their evidence suggests that the virulent version of the coronavirus which they tagged the "L-type" version was the dominant strain in the earliest phase of the outbreak that began in Wuhan late last year. That strain, they said, appeared to recede as the epidemic progressed.
But among samples collected later, as COVID-19 spread across China and into other countries, a variant of the virus they dubbed the "S-type" was more common, the scientists reported. They suggested that the genetic makeup of the S version more closely resembles coronaviruses circulating in bats and pangolins, the animals that are thought to have incubated the virus before it jumped to humans. And they surmised that it is a less virulent version.
The findings suggest the S-type version of the coronavirus may have escaped its animal hosts earlier than previously believed and that it may have been circulating longer without causing enough illness to set off alarm bells.
The Chinese scientists reported their analysis Thursday in the journal National Science Review. The team was led by Peking University's bioinformatics researcher Jian Lu in Beijing.
The study authors acknowledged that their conclusions are very preliminary and are based on a very small sample of viruses. The variations they found will need to be observed in many more specimens taken from other patients, and their genetic differences will need to be compared with physicians' reports and epidemiological notes. Only then can their suspicions can be confirmed, they wrote.
Officials at the World Health Organization warned that "it's important we don't overinterpret" the scientists' findings.
"It's got a slightly different signature, but it's not a fundamentally different virus," said Mike Ryan, the WHO official coordinating the agency's response to the COVID-19 epidemic.
Some scientists were far more critical, with some calling for the paper to be retracted.
The new analysis comes from scientists in a relatively new and fast-moving field that's devoted to the genetic investigation of disease-causing germs.
Using a technique called phylodynamic analysis, researchers collect and sequence the genomes of many samples of a given microbe and scour them for tiny substitutions in their DNA or RNA. By tracking those genetic shifts, they can reconstruct a rough picture of a germ's passage through a population, and detect turning points along the way.
The authors of the new study compared genetic sequences of viral samples taken from 27 patients in Wuhan, 33 patients from elsewhere in mainland China, three from Taiwan and 40 from patients outside China.
Comparing all those samples to those taken from bats, they found relatively little evidence of variability. That suggests the novel coronavirus has circulated in humans for only a few months, changing little as it jumped from person to person and replicated itself, they wrote.
But when the scientists compared the 30,000 nucleotides of each sample to one another and focused on finding differences among them, they found a much greater degree of variability. That's a sign that the changes in the virus since it began to infect humans were "much larger than previously estimated," they wrote.
Of the 103 viral genomes they scoured, 70% were of the L-type variant. But by early January, the scientists wrote, it appears that "human intervention" possibly the "rapid and comprehensive prevention and control measures" adopted by China had begun to limit the spread of this strain.
By late January, doctors and health authorities were on high alert and testing widely for COVID-19 infection. But at that point, the Chinese scientists speculated, they were collecting samples from patients who were sickened by the older, less dangerous S-type version of the virus.
Some geneticists who weren't involved in the study argued that the data could support an alternative interpretation: that the virus has simply spread more widely than they had realized, picking up random mutations along the way. Those mutations may or may not make the virus behave differently.
If the S-type of the virus is the older version that was circulating first, a final mystery remains: Why would the majority of samples taken from the initial patients in Wuhan have fallen into the L-type category? Shouldn't there be more S-types in the mix?
This is where the Chinese scientists make a hotly debated leap: They surmise that the newer L-type version probably picked up more mutations, and evolved further from the bat coronavirus from which it originated, because it either infects people more readily or it replicates more vigorously once it infects.
In other words, it's more transmissible or more aggressive or both.
University of Edinburgh geneticist Andrew Rambaut urged caution about that conclusion. When genetically sequenced samples represent a small and haphazardly collected subset of all infections, the kinds of genetic variations noted by the scientists are "entirely expected," he wrote on Twitter.
To claim that such mutations necessarily make a virus behave differently, he added, "is a flawed inference."
A group of researchers from the MRC-University of Glasgow Center for Virus Research in Scotland offered a more detailed rebuttal of the new paper. Among other things, they said the study authors misinterpreted their data and failed to account for limitations in their statistical methods.
"Given these flaws, we believe that Tang et al. should retract their paper, as the claims made in it are clearly unfounded and risk spreading dangerous misinformation at a crucial time in the outbreak," the Glasgow team wrote. |