Coronavirus could be getting weaker

Scientists in the US and Italy- but early days with more research needed.

https://www.mirror.co.uk/science/coronavirus-could-getting-weaker-scientists-21981820

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8376105/Is-Covid-19-really-potent.html

They say viruses mutate, and sometimes it gets stronger and sometimes weaker. It may even evolve based on the number of people it infects. Speculation that if it is too strong, it evolves to get weaker. 

It some speculation that "these changes are similar to those seen in the SARS epidemic of 2003, and indicate that the virus could be weakening, according to the researchers".

The new U.K. coronavirus rules will surely put a damper on the used car salesman and ou Rooies’ relationship 

The garden police! Officers in England can now order people to leave a friend's backyard if they are breaching lockdown rules - as government bans paddling pools and having sex with someone from another house

Wouldn't surprise me if the virus is weakening. Viruses adapt and mutate. The virus doesn't want its host to die.

The Democrats certainly wants the infected people to die.

The Democrats certainly wants the infected people to die.

Oh do shut your stupid trap ou Maaik. Stop infecting every thread with your rank stupidity and your blatant bias.

In the rugby section we have to hear you droning on day after day like a stuck record saying the exact same thing over and over and over again . . . I are kan laaik to think that Morne Steyn are defishint . . . now you're doing the same thing in this section, just repeating the same drivel day after day . . . I kan laaik to think the Demokrats are krooks.

Just shut your stupid trap. Everyone - and I mean everyone - thinks you're a stupid fool and the fact that you haven't grasped that yet is further proof.

Apart from being the stupidest person that most of us have ever encountered, you're also a low-life liar . . . not the most attractive combination.

Now shove off and go tell your stupid stories to Meyer Bosman's mother or Frans Malherbe's cousin's hairdresser or whoever the heck it is that might be interested in listening to your repetetive and biased bullshit.

If the virus is getting weaker, maybe it has been tricked by the lockdown around the world.

A sudden drop in the number of potential hosts. If so, it thinks that it has spread too much into the population that the host is dying.
Although they are individual life forms in different environments...

The way that London dropped it really bizarre. It is estimated up to 20% of the population has had it. It now has an R rate of about half the rest of the country, with very few new cases each day. 

There seem to be other variables at play as while the lockdown would reduce transmission of the disease, but there is still interaction in a busy city- so it should not have reduced as much as it has.

Or it is a bit like flue in that it peters off in the summertime. Perhaps to return each winter, but hopefully not.  

---------------

https://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/news/071201_adenovirus

Pathogen lineages that fail to meet this challenge and never infect a new host are doomed. They will go extinct when their human host dies or when the immune system destroys the infection.

Since transmission is a matter of life or death for pathogen lineages, some evolutionary biologists have focused on this as the key to understanding why some have evolved into killers and others cause no worse than the sniffles. The idea is that there may be an evolutionary trade-off between virulence and transmission. Consider a virus that exploits its human host more than most and so produces more offspring than most. This virus does a lot of damage to the host — in other words, is highly virulent. From the virus's perspective, this would, at first, seem like a good thing; extra resources mean extra offspring, which generally means high evolutionary fitness. However, if the viral reproduction completely incapacitates the host, the whole strategy could backfire: the illness might prevent the host from going out and coming into contact with new hosts that the virus could jump to. A victim of its own success, the viral lineage could go extinct and become an evolutionary dead end. This level of virulence is clearly not a good thing from the virus's perspective.

Natural selection balances this trade-off, selecting for pathogens virulent enough to produce many offspring (that are likely to be able to infect a new host if the opportunity arises) but not so virulent that they prevent the current host from presenting them with opportunities for transmission. Where this balance is struck depends, in part, on the virus's mode of transmission. Sexually-transmitted pathogens, for example, will be selected against if they immobilize their host too soon, before the host has the opportunity to find a new sexual partner and unwittingly pass on the pathogen. Some biologists hypothesize that this trade-off helps explain why sexually-transmitted infections tend to be of the lingering sort. Even if such infections eventually kill the host, they do so only after many years, during which the pathogen might be able to infect a new host.

“ If the virus is getting weaker, maybe it has been tricked by the lockdown around the world. 

A sudden drop in the number of potential hosts. If so, it thinks that it has spread too much into the population that the host is dying.  “

“  Or it is a bit like flue in that it peters off in the summertime.“

Hahaha. I can almost see ou Vrottie, paving up and down his rows of dilapidated used cars, talking to himself, saying: “Think Vrottie, think. You have to come up with something, anything, before someone remembers how I took the piss at Trump saying it will go away”.

Dance Vrottie, dance. Cat on a hot tin roof, comes to mind . 

‘Wouldn't surprise me if the virus is weakening. Viruses adapt and mutate. The virus doesn't want its host to die.‘

Hahaha.....the virus ‘doesn’t want’ the host to die. This is the first virus ever that has conscious thought, no wonder it’s such a tricky customer. 

Still it’s behaviors are not going to fool old Peeper....he won’t be surprised. It’s good to know he has unearthed this property of viruses. But wait didn’t somebody say that before?

"If the virus is getting weaker, maybe it has been tricked by the lockdown around the world. 

A sudden drop in the number of potential hosts. If so, it thinks that it has spread too much into the population that the host is dying.
Although they are individual life forms in different environments..."

Shark,

Please know that I could take very many cheap shots at you for this statement. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that you're speaking conceptually, though I'm quite sure that you are not.

Here is a short cartoon that describes the idea behind The Selfish Gene - Dawkins. It's only 8 minutes long. Please watch it. You won't be disappointed.

And if you want a better idea of how that stuff works and more examples, some truly astounding ones, then here is a link to the full audiobook. 

No BS, that book is top five in most influential books I've read. Since mutations and ESSs are pertinent these days, I can't think of a better time to take nine hours and gain a deeper understanding of this than any article or news piece will give you.

Do it. Don't do it, up to you man.

Edit: Not trying to step on religious toes here. Just that the above is the most rational explanation of things, to me. I also have no problems with the idea that the conditions may have been set-up intentionally for evolution to have occurred. 

Yeah ... and pigs can fly.

The virus doesn't have the ability to strategies ... nor can it come up with a game plan to counter ours.

It's a dumb bug with a singular purpose. To dominate and over run it's host.

Get a grip will you.

Actually Klown, you and Moffie are displaying your ignorance here.

A short-generation organism like a virus is the perfect examples of evolution at work. Viruses adapt and mutate a lot quicker than animals and plants and - like all life forms - if its survival is threatened it will adapt accordingly . . . so if it's killing the host, it will mutate to become less virulent and less lethal.

No-one is suggesting the virus has a brain and thinks to itself or makes decisions - you'd have to be stupid enough to think that a day is measured by the speed that the sun rotates on its axis to think that - but whatever evolutionary forces of nature cause a species to adapt so that it can survive in a changing environment, those same evolutionary forces would cause a virus to evolve to become less lethal so that the host is not killed.

For example, the Arctic fox and the red fox are descended from the same common ancestor. Over millions of years, the foxes that moved further north adapted to the colder environment by growing longer, white-coloured hair. It's not like one red fox suddenly consciously decided to change its hair length and hair colour and become an Arctic fox . . . only a very stupid and small-minded idiot would even consider that as a possibility . . .  it was an evolutionary process by means of Natural Selection. 

Same thing with a virus except because it has such a short generation, the evolutionary process doesn't take millions of years, it takes weeks or months.

"It's a dumb bug with a singular purpose. To dominate and over run it's host."

Wrong. The virus doesn't just want to kill us. It's a living thing and like all living things without exception, it wants to survive and procreate. Killing the host is not in its own interests . . . and as for "dumb", well, assigning the virus some measure of intelligence just demonstrates your own massive ignorance.

Rooi - "No-one is suggesting the virus has a brain and thinks to itself or makes decisions"

Shark - "If so, it thinks that it has spread too much into the population that the host is dying."

Let's see what happens when we apply the same reasoning you use against Trump.

Now, if I were Rooi...i would say...

"Well it's right there, in your master's words. Now tell me, how does one think without a brain...hmmm? 

You ______panzees are so brainwashed that you have to invent new understanding to make sense of things.

So just answer me this...how does one think without a brain? Just that, that's all I want to know. Nothing else. Ok. Now I know you are too stupid to understand my one simple question...so I'll  ask it again, very clear.

How does one think without a brain?"

Ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooops

"so if it's killing the host, it will mutate to become less virulent and less lethal."

Nope. 

It will always mutate and mutation is indifferent. That is the only certainty.

"Wouldn't surprise me if the virus is weakening. Viruses adapt and mutate. The virus doesn't want its host to die."

Mutations are totally random and only the "better/effective/successful" mutations will survive or spread successfully to evolve further.

"Each mutation must win a standing war where it starts as the most disadvantaged underdog."

Exactly Plum.

It mutates irrespective of how the host responds to the invasion. Mutating to prolong the hosts life span is about as absurd as Redneck and Dumb Fuck claiming not to be liars.

It's what a virus does ... just as lying is what Redneck and DumbFuck do. There is no thought process behind it. It's a natural occurrence.     

The evidence is there for all to see.

The only difference between the two is that with a virus one can never tell when it'll mutate ... or what form it's mutation will take. It's unpredictable. The end result is that it's host has to rethink his approach ... his strategy ... it's back to the drawing board with him ... whereas Redneck and DumbFuck are an easy read ... totally predictable. They will always follow a lie up with another ... and another. 

To think that both these wankers are a lot less intelligent than a dumb bug.

Rooi, you never did say which version of reason we should use RE the above. 

I'm guessing you don't want the same version you used on Trump?

"So many coursies for all'o me horsies, " huh?

"Let's see what happens when we apply the same reasoning you use against Trump.

Now, if I were Rooi...i would say...

"Well it's right there, in your master's words. Now tell me, how does one think without a brain...hmmm? 

You ______panzees are so brainwashed that you have to invent new understanding to make sense of things.

So just answer me this...how does one think without a brain? Just that, that's all I want to know. Nothing else. Ok. Now I know you are too stupid to understand my one simple question...so I'll  ask it again, very clear.

How does one think without a brain?"

Ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooops"

Struggling?

I just pulled up a chair

It's getting fun in here

Rooi, you never did say which version of reason we should use RE the above. 

I'm guessing you don't want the same version you used on Trump?

"So many coursies for all'o me horsies," huh?

Referencing...

"Let's see what happens when we apply the same reasoning you use against Trump.

Now, if I were Rooi...i would say...

"Well it's right there, in your master's words. Now tell me, how does one think without a brain...hmmm? 

You ______panzees are so brainwashed that you have to invent new understanding to make sense of things.

So just answer me this...how does one think without a brain? Just that, that's all I want to know. Nothing else. Ok. Now I know you are too stupid to understand my one simple question...so I'll  ask it again, very clear.

How does one think without a brain?"

Above, I demonstrated your reasoning. Shall I pull up posts to verify?

And yet below, you ask us to reason in complete contrast to what you have demonstrated previously.

Rooi - "No-one is suggesting the virus has a brain and thinks to itself or makes decisions"

Shark - "If so, it thinks that it has spread too much into the population that the host is dying."

So I'll ask again, which reason do you prefer we use? Do we use what you apply to Trump or do we use the reasoning that a normal person would apply? As far as I can tell, you're demanding us to be rational while you've demonstrated clearly irrational reasoning yourself.

In summary, I'm pointing out your hypocrisy. 

Tell us, how convenient you find it to be able to mix and match your logic as your agenda sees fit.

Not gonna happen huh?

Another day at school, another bloody nose. 

Poor commie. 

And here is an example of jus t the kind of illogical reasoning that you are very guilty of yet now, on this thread, seem to deride others for...

"See for yourself . . . tell me what word Bozo uses at exactly 35 seconds into this clip . . .

Just a one-word answer required. Go on then, Baboon-ou . . ."

Redroot, Mike has been excellent on the Wuhan Virus and politics etc. 

You and Redshark have been exposed as raving communist loons and are now a laughing stock. 

Redrooi stop lying about your complaining bitterly about your son not getting that job because of affirmative action! You supported affirmative action and called me a racist for not supporting affirmative action right from the start. 

You are not only a stinking hypocrite but now you are also lying about all this.

Plum, I thought it was just me...welcome!

"The virus sees a sudden decline in potential hosts and automatically evolves become less lethal and contagious. (The more lethal it is, the more contagious it can be). "

It has eyes too?

Sharkbok, you're very patient with the Trumpanzees. Good for you.

There is a big difference between evolving and mutating.

Mutating is a different version of the same thing.

Evolving is changing from one thing into something completely different. Like a raptor sprouting wings and changing into a bird.    

A virus is a basic form of life that adapts to its environment. So for those that say mutation is totally random need to think again. 

Mutation is a life form adapting to make itself stronger by evolving to dominate its environment (better at reproducing than other forms of life). The better it is at reproducing, the more lethal and contagious it can be to its host (environment). 

A virus living in a host is like a parasite. Without a host (environment) it cant survive. So a complex life form like a human is its environment. 

So if it gets less opportunity for spreading to new hosts, it might become weaker by itself to survive. (R Rate- Reproduction Rate). 

Otherwise, all viruses may already have killed all complex forms of life that host it. Then there would only be a world with viruses and bacteria.