[ExI] thoughts on omicron

[Stathis Papaioannou]

On Wed, 1 Dec 2021 at 11:44, spike jones via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

>
>
>
>
> We are hearing about omicron covid, and the actions various governments
> are taking to try to stop it, but we have seen this before: nothing can
> stop a virus.  Sooner or later it will get everywhere, we know the story
> well.
>
>
>
> Virologists point out that the very most contagious mutations are those
> which don’t really do much, because the host spreads it all over the place
> before she even realizes she has it.  OK that makes sense to me.
>
>
>
> What if… after all this suffering and all those people perished… this is
> that variant which spreads really easily because doesn’t make the person
> all that terribly sick, but alerts the immune system in such a way that it
> generally reacts effectively when any of the covid mutants come along?  If
> that is the case with omicron, then we are once again doing exactly the
> wrong thing: trying to stop a virus which would be beneficial (in a sense)
> because it would out-compete its more-deadly siblings, alerting (or
> training) the human immune system without actually slaying the prole who
> caught it.
>
>
>
> Perhaps if omicron just runs its course, it would lead to an outcome
> plenty of virologists suggest was the possible reason why SARS came on so
> suddenly in 2009, then just as suddenly just went away: a SARS variant
> which doesn’t do much went thru and outplayed its siblings, alerting the
> immune system in a way that these vaccines are apparently mostly failing to
> do.
>
>
>
> Have we medical hipsters among us who wish to comment?
>

That is probably what has happened at some point with all the minor
respiratory viruses that humans live with. However, we don't know yet that
omicron will do the same.
-- 
Stathis Papaioannou
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20211201/18a760a3/attachment.htm>