8 strains of covid19

[gardenmom5]

since different areas have different strains, that will also affect how sick the population gets, and the death rates.  so, no comparing apples and oranges.

 

While researchers caution they're only seeing the tip of the iceberg, the tiny differences between the virus strains suggest shelter-in-place orders are working in some areas and that no one strain of the virus is more deadly than another. They also say it does not appear the strains will grow more lethal as they evolve. 

“The virus mutates so slowly that the virus strains are fundamentally very similar to each other,” said Charles Chiu, a professor of medicine and infectious disease at the University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine.

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most cases on the U.S. West Coast are linked to a strain first identified in Washington state. It may have come from a man who had been in Wuhan, China, the virus’ epicenter, and returned home on Jan. 15. It is only three mutations away from the original Wuhan strain, according to work done early in the outbreak by Trevor Bedford, a computational biologist at Fred Hutch, a medical research center in Seattle. (incl. because I'm in the seattle area.)

 

 

 

[mom2scouts]

My teen son said to me the other day, "I hate viruses. It's bad enough they exist, but then they mutate too." I think I have to agree with him.

[kbutton]

As far as mutations go, I think I heard that more stable = better vaccine chances. I am glad they can track it!

[TracyP]

I'm confused. The first paragraph in OP says that different strains may affect the death rate. The second paragraph says "no one strain is more deadly than another." Am I misreading something? I have been up since 3 this a.m... 

[ElizabethB]

6 minutes ago, TracyP said:

I'm confused. The first paragraph in OP says that different strains may affect the death rate. The second paragraph says "no one strain is more deadly than another." Am I misreading something? I have been up since 3 this a.m... 

I think that means that they can, but in this case they don't.  So, the first sentence is overall behavior of strains of viruses, the second one about the particular mutations that exist in this particular virus.

[PrincessMommy]

This was such a fascinating read.  Thank you for posting it!

 

I was wondering how common it was for virus's to have several strains. It doesn't say exactly, but this portion seems to indicate that it's quite common.  

"The COVID-19 virus does not mutate very fast. It does so eight to 10 times more slowly than the influenza virus, said Anderson, making its evolution rate similar to other coronaviruses such as Ebola, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS).

It’s also not expected to spontaneously evolve into a form more deadly than it already is to humans."

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Also, this:

"COVID-19 hits people differently, with some feeling only slightly under the weather for a day, others flat on their backs sick for two weeks and about 15% hospitalized. Currently, an estimated 1% of those infected die. The rate varies greatly by country and experts say it is likely tied to testing rates rather than actual mortality."

 

I'm wondering what other number crunchers here think of that.  I know several people here have been worried about a much higher mortality rate.

 

[TracyP]

10 minutes ago, kand said:

There is no indication so far the different strains are having any impact on the severity of the disease. The changes are tiny changes in a couple base pairs, not enough to affect function. The useful thing about tracking them right now, is to see how the virus is spreading, because you can track different circulating strains like a family tree to see where they came from, and how long they have been there. If you haven’t clicked the link in the OP‘s first sentence, there’s some good information in the article.

Yep, I read it. It is a good article. But the first sentence in the OP seems to contradict the article which explicity states the different severity and death rates are not linked to different strains.