Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/05/05/covid-19-has-mutated-into-a-mo.html
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We’re so fucked.
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Virus Gonna Virus.
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Well, of course. Why not? Sure. Great.
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This is horrible news, but I’m gonna seek out a more credible source than the fuckin LA Times.
(In the words of Larry Wilmore, “I haven’t forgotten about you, muthafuckas.”)
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Yeah, virologists are calling bullshit on this preprint.
Edited to add thread unroll: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1257655037054128130.html
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Yep. “Says who?” was the first thing I said when I saw the headline. If we’re going to give people shit about talking about vaccines and therapies before they have been trialed we have to stop spreading around pre-published studies. This is how people lose faith in science.
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Damnit America is #1 because of our cognitive dissonance and “freedom”, not because we were delt the upgraded version of the virus.
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If it ever mutates into a strain that infects you when you read news about coronavirus, then I’ll be toast.
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The research, if it holds up, guts the lies Trump, Pompeo & crew have been pushing about Chinese bio-war-labs creating & distributing the pathogen.
Not that there was much doubt that the Impotus was lying, but extra facts are extra excellent.
That said, this new info makes me think a vaccine is many years away.
Well, I just skimmed the paper. I’m not in that field. But it seems that the basic claims about more transmissible and that earlier strains may not confer immunity to this strain, well, they’re all in the linked Korber et al. article. They start addressing this (in ways I can more or less understand" in the section “The D614G mutation.”
But, eh, again, I’m not that kind of doctor. At all. By a long shot.
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Thankfully that’s one way this doesn’t feel like something out of Snow Crash.
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I’m sure it will come back around to religious zealots/a mental model of the virus also being the virus finding various ways to mutate and spread itself.
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I heard the new strain can affect hornets, too. It makes them grow in size, become so aggressive that they decapitate entire hives of necessary pollinators, and causes their stings to feel murder.
But that’s just what I heard.
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Frankly, this seems more than a bit irresponsible to reprint so uncritically.
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hmm…aside from the alarming headline, this seems like pretty typical viral recombination - something which all RNA-based viruses do and has already been observed in COVID-19. Some viruses recombine slower or faster depending on the rate of spread among the population. Recombination is basically where the virus takes on some of the host genes in order to adapt and reproduce.
It’s a very common process and illustrates the basic concepts of Darwinian adaptation. It seems way too premature to draw any conclusions or spread panic based on just this single pre-published study.
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Seems to be pretty common around here lately.
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Whether or not the new strain is actually more fatal wasn’t determined in the study, “but it could still complicate efforts to bring the pandemic under control,” says the Times .
Assuming that the WH would actually stoop to reality and accept that 1) there is a new strain and that 2) it is more contagious, I could still see them latching on like lampreys to the current question of whether it is more fatal… with that leading them to news briefing speculations that ‘it could be even less fatal, for all we know’ (in order to encourage the end of lockdowns), and all that without encouraging much greater actions that would limit exposure because this new fucking strain is even more fucking contagious than before!!
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Yes, but my F-150 has a gun rack, which is no match for any mutation of virus, so let’s open up the country so I can get my jerbs back, and no longer have to wear my confederate flag mask (unless it’s for disguising my face from the lib elite’s computers that are trying to facially recognize me)!
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If it learns how to infect us over Zoom, we’re screwed.
Maybe it will just mutate into a form which breaks down rubber seals in aircraft.
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