When Portland resident Jessica Rogers-Hall came down with COVID last month – her third time – she followed the Oregon Health Authority’s advice.
She isolated when she truly felt sick. And after a day, when she began to feel better, she donned a mask and returned to her job as a life coach for people experiencing homelessness.
Others in her circle of friends and associates, including a restaurant worker and an airline pilot, who tested positive around the same time, also followed Oregon’s recommendations: Those with fevers or other debilitating symptoms stayed home for a couple days, but returned to work after that.
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But Oregon’s policy went unnoticed by many until last month, when California followed suit and a much more public national debate erupted among epidemiologists and regular folks alike. Many are pondering the question: Is COVID so mild for most that the public needn’t stay home when they still might be contagious? And further, should public health officials give their blessing for residents to return to their daily lives – to work, school, public transit, the gym, stores, social gatherings and the like?
This week, The Washington Post reported that the CDC may follow Oregon’s and California’s lead by revising its guidelines in coming months – possibly airing the idea for public feedback in April. The move would be what’s seen as a more practical approach toward what people are willing to do, in an era when COVID doesn’t pose a serious threat to most because of vaccinations or previous infections.
My understanding: Viruses don’t mutate to kill hosts. They mutate to survive and be passed on. It’ll continue to get more mild but more contagious.
That’s why the flu from the 1919 pandemic was bad but short lived. COVID is following a similar pattern.
Different than bacteria and antibiotics. That’s a mess of our own making.
They don’t mutate for any purpose, that’s just what happens over time. What direction it goes can vary with how the mutation affects survival. On average not killing a host works out better, but that doesn’t imply that’s a preferred path nor exclude a mutation that gets worse for the hosts as well as the disease.
This simply isn’t true, also, (already healthy people) not dying from it doesn’t mean it’s all fine and dandy once you’ve recovered from the “flu” (or at all):
https://www.unmc.edu/healthsecurity/transmission/2023/07/25/long-covid-persists-as-a-mass-disabling-event/
https://blogs.einsteinmed.edu/blog/2023/06/13/long-covid-is-a-mass-disabling-condition-treat-it-like-one/
https://www.greaterkashmir.com/health/study-decodes-link-between-long-covid-and-chronic-fatigue/
https://www.donotpanic.news/p/why-covid-can-never-be-just-a-cold
Hope you’re right, and we’re not keeping a bunch of marginal immune systems alive through heroic efforts just to breed more variations.
viruses don’t mutate for any single reason, it’s not directed evolution, it’s errors in transcribing their own gene code in duplication.
That’s what most evolution is. For sure. Not imagining there a will behind it
Mutations don’t happen for a reason, but long term trends in widespread mutations absolutely do happen for a reason, namely that they meaningfully contribute to the organism’s ability to reproduce.
Killing the host doesn’t do that nearly as effectively as giving the host a minor cold that doesn’t even make them feel like they need to change their routine.
and sometimes, even horrific shit like rabies - can kill the host and still be viable for reproduction and future variation.
just because it kills the host doesn’t automatically take it out of the gene pool before it can cause enormous harm.