Comments by "N Marbletoe" (@nmarbletoe8210) on "Pandemic, mostly good news" video.

  1.  @TheEulerID  Lower viral load would be due to masks etc (as mentioned), and also it could be partly due to the virus evolving into a less deadly form. . I have no evidence for this, but it is a well known thing in biology. It is very hard to research in people, especially in real time during an outbreak.
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  2. Yes, this is expected for new diseases that are not vector-born. Evolutionary medicine is still a very small field, unfortunately.
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  3.  @ghwk-phd2784  There are vaccines for animal coronaviruses.
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  4.  @robertlivingston360  PCR is good. It is supposed to pick up small amounts. The false positive rate is less than 0.6%, probably much less.
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  5. And there are also 2 to 10x as many cases as the confirmed case numbers indicate.
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  6. i don't know. However, water-soluble vitamins are much harder to overdose than fat-soluble, and C is water soluble.
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  7. ​ @RichaRat  Interseting, thanks for sharing!
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  8. That seems like a very likely factor. I would add that given such improved behavior of people, such as quarantining severe cases, the virus is encouraged to evolve to a less deadly form.
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  9. Yes I think that is part of the story. . There are case studies of disease evolution in Cholera and the 1918 flue that tend to suport your thesis.
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  10. The false positive rate for the PCR is less than 0.6%, probably much less (Iceland random invitation survey).
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  11. Yes, it could very well be evolving. It is not vector-born so it is the type of disease that "should" become less harmful over time.
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  12. Oh you want scientific estimates, do you? . That requires random sample surveys, which are easy and cheap.
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  13. Both are irrelevant. The only way to estimate population prevalence is with random surveys.
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  14. Or both.
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  15. That's why you have to do random sample testing. (Which I think the UK is doing every week?)
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  16. Our Democratic governor is also into the "percent positive" junk.
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  17. The ratio of cases to deaths has decreased by 5 or 6 times in the US. Comparing the second to the first peak, the second one had twice as many cases and 1/3rd the deaths. . So it seems the US does have a similar lowering of death rates. Or am I not understanding the comparison you are making?
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  18. "infection of the brain is likely to be rare"
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  19. I'm guessing we are 1/3rd of the way to herd immunity, but without regular random sample surveys it is impossible to tell. . Combined with a vaccine, I think the herd immunity from exposure will push the virus off the table. It will still be hanging around for a long time but small outbreaks will tend to die out instead of spread.
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  20. I have predicted it would evolve to be less deadly, based on evolutionary theory and past epizootics. . However, it is very hard to confirm such a thing in real time. There are many "strains" but most are probably the same threat.
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  21.  Jim fallow  They are mostly good intentioned, but evolution is not often considered in modeling or policy making. . Too bad, because without it nothing makes sense. The virus is probably evolving to be less deadly. That's what it would "want" to do.
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  22.  @arthurdick9553  Upvote, but I think that you also could include more ecology in the calculations. Often populations tend to equilibrium, rather than extinction.
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  23.  @arthurdick9553  Well, an equilibrium can be wonderful, or it can be very annoying. We would rather get rid of a disease than have it hang around forever! . Even the worst diseases usually do not make an animal extinct, because after it kills 90% or whatever, it can barely find any more to kill. The ecological equilibrium here is when the number of births equals the number of deaths. The total population is so small that there is little transmission from place to place. It is a point of balance, and it's a horror movie. . This is very common in nature. One year there's a mold that kills most of the grasshoppers, the next year the survivors repopulate the post-apocalyptic grasshopper world. Is that positive? I think it's just reality. Nature loves us but it's tough love.
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  24. Yes, but for the same reason it's not harmful. . I recall a study on rats who got stronger faster with exercise and C than with exercise alone. The C doses were pretty high.
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  25. Yes! Except that it does have side effects because it's not always asymptomatic. But it works the same way for population immunity.
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  26. We can't really fact-check metaphors.
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  27.  @Froven80  It's part of a fix.
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  28. and virus evolving to be nicer to it's host
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  29. forests are dry (maybe climate change), and lightening started many of them, but I don't really know much about it
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  30. I think there is a lot of concern, but not a well coordinated strategy.
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  31.  @007travelbug  I judge the scientific-ness of a state's or nation's effort by one simple factor: do they use random sample testing? . If not, it's not a serious effort. They're flying blind, when opening the eyes is cheap and quick.
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  32. The best way to inform one's self is to stop watching TV news. No news would be more balanced than the nightly news.
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  33. That pandemic also shows that the virus evolved in response to conditions -- first to get more virulent (due to war conditions) and then less virulent (as people acted smartly to quarantine etc). .
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