Top doctor in Italy says coronavirus is weakening

[Larry]

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/06/20/coronavirus-has-downgraded-tiger-wild-cat-could-die-without/

Infectious diseases specialist Prof Matteo Bassetti says Covid-19 has been losing its virulence and could die out on its own without a vaccine.

[Axtremus]

It will be very good if SARS-CoV-2 mutates into something more benign like the sort that’s no worse than, say, the common cold virii.

[Kincaid]

This would be awesome. Would perhaps explain why deaths seem to keep dropping while infections are up.

If true, makes you wonder why God wants Trump to be re-elected?

[Doctor Phibes]

They were saying this at the beginning of June

https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-losing-its-lethality-in-italy-according-to-doctors-2020-6

It would be awesome, but apparently they're hospitalising 5000 a day in Texas, so I'm skeptical.

[89th]

Yeah but everything’s bigger in Texas.

[George K]

https://reason.com/2020/06/28/cdc-antibody-studies-confirm-huge-gap-between-covid-19-infections-and-known-cases/

Newly published antibody test results from half a dozen parts of the country confirm that COVID-19 infections in the United States far outnumber confirmed cases. The ratio of estimated infections to known cases in these studies, which the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported on Friday, range from 6 to 1 in Connecticut as of early May to 24 to 1 in Missouri as of late April.

These results confirm something we already knew: The COVID-19 infection fatality rate—deaths as a share of all infections—is much lower than the crude case fatality rate—deaths as a share of known cases. That is bound to be true when testing is limited and a virus typically produces mild or no symptoms. At the same time, the CDC's antibody studies imply that efforts to control the epidemic through testing, isolation, quarantine, and contact tracing will not be very effective, since they reach only a small percentage of virus carriers.

[Rainman]

Makes me wonder what the typical trajectory is for a typical virus.

Do most mutate towards being more virulent without killing the host, or do they mutate in a variety of directions with random offspring? How frequently does any virus reinfect, as opposed to building antibodies within the surviving host? Ax, you busy?

I just read that the Wuhan virus will peak again in August, and will then decrease its potency and contagion in September before another mutant wave hits late November. I read this prediction by the head of virologisticollogy in Portlandistan, a suburb in the nation of CHAZ CHOP.

[Doctor Phibes]

If we can't predict the weather 10 days from now with any degree of precision, I have a hard time believing we can predict this.

[Mik]

Not with any certainty. We can observe what little we really know of other Corona viruses and predict based on that. But that's just a prediction.

[Axtremus]

https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/medical/worlds-dominant-strain-of-coronavirus-is-10-times-more-infectious-than-the-one-that-jumped-to-humans-in-china-because-it-mutated-so-its-vital-spike-protein-doesnt-snap-as-often-in-the-body-scientists-say/ar-BB167e7l?li=BBnb7Kz

Then there is this other study that says there is a mutation of SARS-CoV-2 that has gotten more infectious.

[Mik]

I suppose it could get more infectious and still be weaker in its effect, although that seems unlikely.

[Axtremus]

@Mik said in Top doctor in Italy says coronavirus is weakening:

I suppose it could get more infectious and still be weaker in its effect, although that seems unlikely.

Yeap, would not be so bad if becoming more infectious is mitigated by also becoming less deadly or less physically debilitating. Though that article mentions that, for that particular mutation, being more infectious does not make it more deadly or less deadly.