Latest Coronavirus - Yikes

[volinbham]

More anecdotal at this point, but some limited evidence it's making people sicker.

Is the Delta Variant Making Younger Adults ‘Sicker, Quicker’?

wouldn't the death rate be the best indicator of "sicker" - it's lower than with other variants

hospitalization data should show % of positive tests resulting in hospitalization.

add to that, we don't know what % of Delta are asymptomatic.

so to this point the data suggests less severe given the decoupling of cases and death.

 

[MG1968]

Hey remember when the First Lady tried to make school lunches healthier? What was the reaction from the right on that?

You obviously didn’t have a kid in school during that fiasco.

 

[Orangeburst]

I should have clarified: I wonder if the Chinese engineered the virus to become more contagious over time, not more intense. Intense isn’t the right word.

If I had some master evil plan of controlled chaos, this would be the way. You would not want to kill the world populace, economy and trade. Just deadly enough and contagious

 

[evillawyer]

wouldn't the death rate be the best indicator of "sicker" - it's lower than with other variants

hospitalization data should show % of positive tests resulting in hospitalization.

add to that, we don't know what % of Delta are asymptomatic.

so to this point the data suggests less severe given the decoupling of cases and death.

Hard to tell. The low hanging fruit got cut down in the first few waves. The most compromised are now the most vaxxed. So can't go purely by comparing this wave to the last two, at least not without comparing comparable cohorts.

 

[volinbham]

Hey remember when the First Lady tried to make school lunches healthier? What was the reaction from the right on that?

remember how many school lunches were thrown out because kids wouldn't eat it? Yeah, everyone should have still said "nice try Michelle, you gave it your best effort"

 

[evillawyer]

wouldn't the death rate be the best indicator of "sicker" - it's lower than with other variants

hospitalization data should show % of positive tests resulting in hospitalization.

add to that, we don't know what % of Delta are asymptomatic.

so to this point the data suggests less severe given the decoupling of cases and death.

Also, excess deaths in India suggest it claimed a few million.

India's pandemic death toll could be in the millions

 

[volinbham]

Hard to tell. The low hanging fruit got cut down in the first few waves. The most compromised are now the most vaxxed. So can't go purely by comparing this wave to the last two, at least not without comparing comparable cohorts.

so given the pattern with viruses is they tend to get weaker for some reason you are taking the tact that this one is different and has gotten stronger.

for an anomaly like that you should be able to show data that it is in fact stronger otherwise we would assume this follows the general evolution of viruses. further, at this point the data we do have shows a decoupling of infection rate and death rates making the evidentiary need even greater to conclude this one is operating differently than viruses tend to.

 

[evillawyer]

Pardon us for not relying on paralegals for a medical opinion on virology

Just basic evolutionary theory love.

 

[volinbham]

Also, excess deaths in India suggest it claimed a few million.

India's pandemic death toll could be in the millions

what's the comparison point in India - isn't it primarily Delta across the board? we don't have other death rates in India to compare Delta to.

 

[volinbham]

Just basic evolutionary theory love.

except for the virus mutations getting stronger part but whatever

 

[Orangeburst]

remember how many school lunches were thrown out because kids wouldn't eat it? Yeah, everyone should have still said "nice try Michelle, you gave it your best effort"

A better question is why are feds even involved in the menus of school lunches

 

[evillawyer]

so given the pattern with viruses is they tend to get weaker for some reason you are taking the tact that this one is different and has gotten stronger.

for an anomaly like that you should be able to show data that it is in fact stronger otherwise we would assume this follows the general evolution of viruses. further, at this point the data we do have shows a decoupling of infection rate and death rates making the evidentiary need even greater to conclude this one is operating differently than viruses tend to.

Does it help the polar bear to have a heavy coat or a warm coat? What is selected for is a warm coat. That warm coat also HAPPENS to be heavy. But the heaviness is not what's being selected for. Being weighed down by a heavy coat makes it slower, causes it to expend more energy, etc Similarly, what is being selected for with COVID is transmissibility. Delta produces a 1000 time higher viral load, which makes it more likely to infect those who come in contact with it. But a higher viral load HAPPENS to cause more severe infections, but that's not what is being selected for. Make sense?

 

[volinbham]

Does it help the polar bear to have a heavy coat or a warm coat? What is selected for is a warm coat. That warm coat also HAPPENS to be heavy. But the heaviness is not what's being selected for. Being weighed down by a heavy coat makes it slower, causes it to expend more energy, etc Similarly, what is being selected for with COVID is transmissibility. Delta produces a 1000 time higher viral load, which makes it more likely to infect those who come in contact with it. But a higher viral load HAPPENS to cause more severe infections, but that's not what is being selected for. Make sense?

where are you getting this?

we should be seeing data that Delta is more severe (higher rate of hospitalization/higher death rate) yet we are not and all I've read is saying they cannot conclude Delta is more severe (causes worse health outcomes). In fact in comparable areas with waves of earlier variants and Delta the death rate has lowered dramatically (even in the US). Part could be due to culling of most vulnerable but only 10% of the country had Covid in eariler variations so there are plenty of vulnerable left given our rates of obesity, heart disease and diabetes

you are moving from general evolutionary trends in viruses to completely ignoring them for Delta without providing any data to support the claim.

a higher viral load doesn't necessarily make it more severe if that viral load is of a weaker virus.

 

[kiddiedoc]

I can tell you in generalities that hospital communication has indicated that there is not any evidence that the Delta variant is more deadly.

 

[kiddiedoc]

Honestly, I think we are seeing a wave of younger people that have not been infected and some unvaccinated that is just going to be a short spike. I don't think there will be a huge wave of mortality.

That's the pattern in other countries, and we are already seeing hopeful turns in many states.

 

[evillawyer]

where are you getting this?

we should be seeing data that Delta is more severe (higher rate of hospitalization/higher death rate) yet we are not and all I've read is saying they cannot conclude Delta is more severe (causes worse health outcomes)

you are moving from general evolutionary trends in viruses to completely ignoring them for Delta without providing any data to support the claim.

Given the time it takes to kill a host (or even the amount of time to make the host severely ill--about two weeks), there is little evolutionary pressure to evolve to be less severe. Those people are walking around spreading the virus for days before they are sick enough to isolate. However, a virus that is more contagious (as the Delta variant is) will out compete variants that are less contagious. The delta likely does this through increased viral load. We know that the severity of infection is linked to the viral load that caused the infection. Thus, a virus can be more severe if the severity is a side-effect of being more transmissible (assuming the increased severity is not creating evolutionary pressures that would cause a less severe form to evolve).

If the delta was killing people in a day, I agree that there would be strong evolutionary pressure to weaken. But that pressure is just not strong enough currently. Likewise, if the polar bear's coat was so heavy that it could rarely catch prey, there would be strong pressure for it to evolve a coat that was just as warm, but lighter. But right now, there is not enough pressure for it to develop a lighter coat.

 

[volinbham]

Some data on viral load and the 1000X higher with Delta.

First on viral load

Confusingly, it does seem that levels of viral load seem to affect people differently. Doctors studying the outbreak in Lombardy in northern Italy looked at more than 5,000 people and compared the nasal swabs of those who had symptoms with those who did not. They found no difference in viral load between the two groups – however, they said because they only studied a small number of people without symptoms they could not draw firm conclusions. Are some people more at risk than others? Yes – health workers who have to get close to patients are

The 1000x higher viral load with Delta

According to current estimates, the Delta variant could be more than twice as transmissible as the original strain of SARS-CoV-2. To find out why, epidemiologist Jing Lu at the Guangdong Provincial Center for Disease Control and Prevention in Guangzhou, China, and his colleagues tracked 62 people who were quarantined after exposure to COVID-19 and who were some of the first people in mainland China to become infected with the Delta strain.

In a preprint posted 12 July1, the researchers report that virus was first detectable in people with the Delta variant four days after exposure,compared with an average of six days among people with the original strain, suggesting that Delta replicates much faster. Individuals infected with Delta also had viral loads up to 1,260 times higher than those in people infected with the original strain.

So I'm not saying the number (1000x) is wrong but it is from a study of 62 patients. The Italian study of over 5000 patients shows viral load isn't a good predictor of symptom severity.

 

[volinbham]

Given the time it takes to kill a host (or even the amount of time to make the host severely ill--about two weeks), there is little evolutionary pressure to evolve to be less severe. Those people are walking around spreading the virus for days before they are sick enough to isolate. However, a virus that is more contagious (as the Delta variant is) will out compete variants that are less contagious. The delta likely does this through increased viral load. We know that the severity of infection is linked to the viral load that caused the infection. Thus, a virus can be more severe if the severity is a side-effect of being more transmissible (assuming the increased severity is not creating evolutionary pressures that would cause a less severe form to evolve).

If the delta was killing people in a day, I agree that there would be strong evolutionary pressure to weaken. But that pressure is just not strong enough currently. Likewise, if the polar bear's coat was so heavy that it could rarely catch prey, there would be strong pressure for it to evolve a coat that was just as warm, but lighter. But right now, there is not enough pressure for it to develop a lighter coat.

I'll ask again where you are getting this other than this is your thinking on viruses and how they evolve.

See bolded. I just added data from an Italian study showing viral load and symptom severity may not be linked. Also, the 1000x higher load for Delta is from a single study in China with 62 patients.

 

[kiddiedoc]

We know that the severity of infection is linked to the viral load that caused the infection.

Absolutely untrue

 

[evillawyer]

Absolutely untrue

SARS-CoV-2 viral load is associated with increased disease severity and mortality | Nature Communications

 

[evillawyer]

I'll ask again where you are getting this other than this is your thinking on viruses and how they evolve.

See bolded. I just added data from an Italian study showing viral load and symptom severity may not be linked. Also, the 1000x higher load for Delta is from a single study in China with 62 patients.

Can we agree that a more contagious variant of a virus should enjoy a competitive advantage over a less contagious variant? I assume we can agree on that. If that's the case, would you agree that it's possible that what makes that variant more contagious (for example, by producing more virus) has a side-effect, such as
making people sicker because they are being infected with higher viral loads. If the virus makes people sicker--but not so sick that they die or isolate and stop spreading the virus--then there is not substantial evolutionary pressure to evolve to be less severe.

 

[volfanhill]

SARS-CoV-2 viral load is associated with increased disease severity and mortality | Nature Communications

COVID-19 viral load not associated with disease severity: findings from a retrospective cohort study - BMC Infectious Diseases

 

[volinbham]

SARS-CoV-2 viral load is associated with increased disease severity and mortality | Nature Communications

or this

Higher viral loads in asymptomatic COVID-19 patients might be the invisible part of the iceberg

Conclusion
In conclusion, this study demonstrates that asymptomatic patients have higher SARSCoV-2 viral loads than symptomatic patients and unlike in the few study in the literature, a significant decrease in viral load of nasopharyngeal/oropharyngeal samples was observed with increasing disease severity. Factors associated with poor prognosis are found to be significantly correlated with low viral load.

 

[kiddiedoc]

SARS-CoV-2 viral load is associated with increased disease severity and mortality | Nature Communications

You're extrapolating from old data and a different viral strain. Irrelevant.

 

[evillawyer]

Transmissibility of COVID-19 depends on the viral load around onset in adult and symptomatic patients