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Psyc3 t1_jdj1meq wrote

Reply to comment by phred14 in What happened to the old COVID variants, like Delta? Could they come back? by number1dork

You have to take into account what evading immunity can mean. It means it can infect people and they can spread it, it however doesn't mean they have a serious disease or need hospitalisation.

The issue with COVID-19 was lack of any immunity at all, while early variants infected the lungs, later, more infectious variants started to infect the upper airway more seriously, but the reality is while this allows more effective spread, the upper airway is largely irrelevant, it isn't what absorbs your Oxygen supply, it is just causes a really bad cough instead.

Then you have to take into account this issue isn't a disease existing, it is everyone getting it at the same time, and then a significant percentage needing hospitalisation at the same time. Imagine everyone broken their arm at the same time, A+E would collapse, orthopaedics would collapse, any requirement for surgery would be overwhelmed (it is needed in 2 weeks), there would be no ability to get people effective rehabilitation, and people would start dying from complications of broken arms.

That is essentially what happened in COVID, with "a broken arm" being an unknown disease with an unknown treatment pathway, which once again is a massive problem. It is fine if you can treat 95% of your patients with X known treatment, it is another thing when you are trying to work out what treatment is needed, then when you do, don't have the equipment to implement it, or the specialists to manage it.

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NutDraw t1_jdjtgv0 wrote

>Imagine everyone broken their arm at the same time, A+E would collapse, orthopaedics would collapse, any requirement for surgery would be overwhelmed (it is needed in 2 weeks), there would be no ability to get people effective rehabilitation, and people would start dying from complications of broken arms.

Excellent example. The biggest risk with something like COVID are the huge waves of cases that overwhelm response systems. Sure, the vast majority of hospitalized people will survive with some supplemental oxygen, but if you only have enough tanks and masks for half of them the death rate skyrockets.

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kurai_tori t1_jdjcc0h wrote

This is why I've been sure to get the lastest booster and am still relatively careful. I don't want to be a cog in the damn viruses' mechanisms. I want my immune system to be able to say "this isn't free real estate".

Cause if you get infected, even if it's asymptomatic, you are a carrier/vector at that point. And you give the virus a chance to thrive, and mutate, and possible mutate to a worse form (viruses can be fatal as long as that still allows them to thrive, and direction of mutation is not always to safer, less fatal forms. Really it's whatever features allow them to outcompete their competitors).

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mikmckn t1_jdjh59d wrote

If more people took that approach it might have helped early on but eventually it was going to come down to a couple different end games.

  1. We eradicate COVID-19 (sars-cov_2). The fact that there are many different coronaviruses out there would indicate this isn't likely to work. The willingness of this thing to mutate would also seem to be a big speedbump in this road. It's not smallpox.

  2. We beat it back so it's uncommon in this country, like polio or mumps. We'd measure outbreaks in the hundreds and it makes the occasional news report instead of being among the leading causes of death. This MIGHT have been possible with an earlier response that was more restrictive and heavier vaccine use. However, other nations did this and still didn't manage to beat it back before it moved into the 3rd option. China is still trying for zero COVID-19.

  3. Endemic. COVID-19 is here for the long haul. It's in the population. Mothers are going to pass their immunity onto new children. Survivors built antibodies. Vaccinated people built antibodies. Less deadly variants managed to sneak under the radar. We'll be stuck with this long term and probably forever. Coronaviruses are adaptable little jerks. Some just cause cold symptoms. Others cause SARS. Like it or not, we are here.

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