[HN Gopher] A coronavirus epidemic hit 20k years ago, new study ...
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A coronavirus epidemic hit 20k years ago, new study finds
Author : gumby
Score : 142 points
Date : 2021-06-24 15:18 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nytimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nytimes.com)
| tasogare wrote:
| > The finding could have dire implications for the Covid-19
| pandemic if it's not brought under control soon through
| vaccination.
|
| > "What is going on right now might be going on for generations
| and generations."
|
| > Covid-19, SARS and MERS. Studies on each of these coronaviruses
| indicate that they jumped into our species from bats or other
| mammals.
|
| Hard to take seriously an article having such an obvious agenda.
| justapassenger wrote:
| Agenda of science - how dare they talk about vaccines or
| viruses jumping between spices.
|
| I read on Facebook while I was pooping, that vaccines are evil
| and don't work, and viruses only exists in our world, because
| people are engineering them! That's the truth, that has no
| agenda behind it! /s
| autokad wrote:
| wow, this is where hackernews has come. All the user stated
| was "its hard to take the article seriously with such an
| obvious agenda", something along those lines. and the
| community thought that was flaggable? this is where we come?
|
| welcome to the great censorship. Believe in all that is holy
| from a political left, and disbelievers shall be punished and
| removed from conversation.
|
| If you can't see agenda painting in those opening paragraphs
| of the article, you need your head checked. Its not the facts
| that are in disagreement, its how they are presented to
| spread an agenda.
|
| No one said vaccines didnt work, that was going on in your
| mind.
| avs733 wrote:
| calling out stupidity is not censorship. Removing stupidity
| from a conversation on a private website is not censorship.
|
| discussing 'agenda' is not a neutral comment or a
| meaningful contribution to discourse on this topic, it is
| stupidity.
| realiswhatyoufe wrote:
| Removing "stupidity" on any platform, public or private,
| is absolutely censorship. And discussing any author bias
| is absolutely a contribution towards conversation
| surrounding the authors work.
| avs733 wrote:
| by this definition of censorship, me asking a random
| person screaming in my house to please leave is
| censorship.
|
| Author bias, alternative perspectives, etc. can all be
| contributions to meaningful discourse when they bring
| evidence or some meaningful engagement. Simply asserting
| your truth through circular logic isn't a contribution.
| It's not because the contribution is about 'bias' its
| because the contribution is stupid. Same rules apply even
| if think the person agrees with me. Process and structure
| trump content.
|
| I'm saying this as the type of person who gets concerned
| when I see a stupid argument that arrives at the same
| position I hold, I don't get excited just because it's
| the same outcome.
| wutbrodo wrote:
| > Removing stupidity from a conversation on a private
| website is not censorship.
|
| Is this not censorship? It sounds like you're assuming
| that "censorship" is by definition illegitimate or
| morally wrong, but I don't think this is inherent to the
| word (except to the extent that we still live in a
| generally liberal, pro-speech society). HN removing
| opinions from its boards seems like it clearly qualifies
| as censorship, even if you agree with the removal.
| autokad wrote:
| the idea that the universe started from an arbitrarily
| small size and expanded was once considered stupidity.
|
| the idea that Iraq might not have WMD was once considered
| stupidity (even by those on the left). "BUT THE UN
| INSPECTORS SAID SO!"
|
| The idea that we might want to wear masks to protect
| ourselves in crowded public places was considered
| stupidity. "THE WHO SAID MASKS DONT WORK! FOUCI SAID!"
|
| calling something stupid is not censorship, removing
| something you feel is stupid is. You feeling this way, is
| certainly stupid.
| Florin_Andrei wrote:
| If by "agenda" you mean this:
|
| > _dire implications for the Covid-19 pandemic if it's
| not brought under control soon through vaccination_
|
| then I propose a different target for the head-check.
| justapassenger wrote:
| > the idea that the universe started from an arbitrarily
| small size and expanded was once considered stupidity.
|
| So was an idea that it was created by some supernatural
| being in 7 days. If you present theory without hard data
| - it's very rightly to call it stupidity.
|
| Scientific process isn't free pass to throw random
| theories, without data backing them.
| a_t48 wrote:
| I wasn't one of the flaggers, but the comment was pretty
| insubstantial and somewhat inflammatory; I am 0 percent
| surprised it got flagged.
|
| Edit: every article put on the internet has an agenda. From
| pushing for vaccines to making the author money to
| spreading valuable technical information. "Having an
| agenda" is not cause to not take an article seriously.
| realiswhatyoufe wrote:
| If a scientist comes out with a research finding, and you
| then find out X Corp was backing them, you'd change your
| confidence on the trustworthiness of the research done.
| Similar to any op-ed, understanding bias is valuable, and
| calling out bias with good reasons is useful for the
| unaware.
| a_t48 wrote:
| Sure. That isn't what the parent-most comment was doing,
| though. There was no analysis - just blanket dismissal.
| realiswhatyoufe wrote:
| Geez. Taking the parent post in horrible faith, really
| unfortunate to see on this platform. All the parent did was
| point out a few comments from the piece which certainly add a
| tinge of bias - stating with certainty that Covid was not
| lab-made for one.
| justapassenger wrote:
| What's unfortunate to see on this platform is amount of
| armchair virology experts who reject scientific process.
| realiswhatyoufe wrote:
| Again, it's a very reasonable theory that the virus was
| lab-made. Stop taking other people's reasonable
| conjecture in the worst faith, it is anti-intellectual.
|
| https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/06/the-lab-leak-
| theory-...
| Florin_Andrei wrote:
| There are many reasonable theories out there, competing
| for the explanation of various phenomena.
|
| And then there are those who pick and choose the theories
| they want to relentlessly push and promote, because they
| support the deepest, most burning desires coming out of
| their guts.
| justapassenger wrote:
| Again, it's a theory that has so far no basis in science
| - it's speculations, mostly by people who have no
| virology background. They maybe even PhD in other biology
| fields, but having them present their opinions, with no
| actual data to back it as facts, is as valid as database
| experts applying their intuition to reason about how to
| build ML models.
|
| Meanwhile, viruses jumping spices is extremely well
| document behavior, and COVID like viruses are known to
| exists in other mammals. Actual data, and Occam's razor
| point to lab-made virus being invalid theory. Can experts
| pursue it? Sure, but until they have actual data,
| presenting it to the general public is click bait fear
| mongering.
|
| And you also conveniently ignore that OP also had issues
| with vaccines, which effectiveness have as much backing
| by science as any theory could possibly have.
| briandear wrote:
| The theory that Covid was naturally occurring is also a
| theory. A true scientist wouldn't reject a theory out of
| hand because the theory calls into question finding and
| research priorities of the scientists doing the
| rejecting. A lot of this theory rejection isn't about
| science but about CYA.
| justapassenger wrote:
| Evolution is also a theory right?
|
| To reject natural origin of COVID you need a lot of
| research and hard data. Memos and journalists
| investigations aren't that.
|
| Equating man made and natural origin as two equally valid
| theories is just dishonest.
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| Virologist here :
|
| https://news.cnrs.fr/articles/the-origin-of-sars-
| cov-2-is-be...
| briandear wrote:
| What's even more unfortunate is when scientific leaders
| reject scientific process for political motivations.
| hatware wrote:
| I'd love to never hear about another coronavirus again.
|
| We went too far prescribing a certain agenda in the last year,
| and it's time to reflect on that.
|
| In my opinion studies and articles like this are doing more to
| fuel the fear porn than they are at teaching anything
| substantial.
| f6v wrote:
| > I'd love to never hear about another coronavirus again.
|
| We should definitely hear about coronavirus again and again
| until everyone learns that millions of people might die unless
| we completely master immunology. Public awareness, safety
| measures, and vaccine development should get as much attention
| as possible until we have a pipeline that allows to develop and
| distribute vaccines in a matter of months. We never know what
| next pandemic might strike.
| hatware wrote:
| > until everyone learns
|
| See, that's the problem. You can't force anything, but you
| present it as a "must be done at all costs" proposition.
| That's very disingenuous.
|
| Regardless, I think you missed my point. Some of us are just
| sick and tired of every crusade that dominates the news cycle
| with severe lack of pragmatism. There are plenty of more
| important issues than coronavirus and it sounds like you're
| suffering from a lack of perspective.
| throwaway4pooxi wrote:
| Or ya know, stop creating them in labs.
|
| I'm down for working on some viruses, but it seems down right
| irresponsible to put a corona spike on a virus that would
| otherwise be hard to transmit.
|
| That's allegedly what happened, lets keep talking about it
| until we find out incase we're still doing it.
|
| I'd like to know whether we need to increase health measures,
| or clamp down on making these altered viruses that may have
| never occurred in nature.
|
| I'm more scared of bioweapons than nukes. The spread is much
| further.
| nonameiguess wrote:
| People keep posting archive links to "non-paywalled" copies, but
| the study itself has freely available full-text not behind a
| paywall. No need to read the NY Times at all. Just go straight to
| the source: https://www.cell.com/current-
| biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(21)...
| breck wrote:
| Here is the source code, AFAICT:
| https://github.com/DavidPierreEnard/Gene_Set_Enrichment_Pipe...
|
| I've been involved in GWAS before, so have an inkling of what's
| going on. I love the creativity in this paper.
|
| The stuff is super fascinating, but the pipelines are still
| very primitive--so I encourage programmers to get involved in
| bioinformatics if you like this stuff! In the future I expect
| we see work like this accompanied by not only source code but
| Spore like simulations that let you explore the ideas like a
| video game.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| It's written in Perl.
| jacquesm wrote:
| So?
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| I have Perl Traumatic Stress Disorder from too much Perl
| in the 90s. Just looking at Perl code makes me break out
| in a cold sweat. I wish I were kidding.
|
| Otherwise, just noted that it was written in Perl.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Ok. It came across as a value judgement. Personally I
| don't much care what its written in, executable line
| noise or anything else as long as practitioners of that
| particular language do not find anything wrong with it.
|
| Scientists typically don't particularly care about the
| latest and greatest software development environments and
| practices, they simply need answers. The best way to deal
| with that is to help out, I personally think they should
| be applauded for putting their code out there, which is
| better than the vast majority. Including CS, for that
| matter.
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| The good thing with perl is, that all the code writen in
| the 90s still works :)
| Y_Y wrote:
| Perl is (amazingly) still a thing in 2021 in quantitative
| biology, at least in big national labs I'm familiar with.
|
| See e.g. https://www.amazon.com/Mastering-Perl-
| Bioinformatics-James-T...
| CoolGuySteve wrote:
| It's hard to beat Perl when it comes to string matching
| performance and flexibility.
| sinsterizme wrote:
| I'd personally rather read the NYT article because it's much
| easier to understand as a layman
| acituan wrote:
| I prefer just the opposite, even if the jargon is harder to
| consume at a glance, the extra layer of editorializing can
| obfuscate central facts or salience peripheral details based
| on whatever their target demographic wants to hear (nothing
| exclusive to NYT).
| derefr wrote:
| If I don't have time to do more than to skim the text, then
| my own lack of understanding / misrecognition of jargon can
| also "obfuscate central facts or [the] salience [of]
| peripheral details."
| acituan wrote:
| The difference is with one you know you don't know, with
| the other "authority" gives people a false confidence at
| scale and worst case you join the botnet of the narrative
| warfare.
|
| PS: to salience: to make salient.
| wahern wrote:
| Don't sell yourself short. Your ability to grok the
| summary (or abstract) of a research paper is probably not
| much worse--and possibly better--than a typical
| journalist, even a journalist at the NYT. Especially
| relative to younger journalists, who seem to rely on
| Twitter and other social media to contextualize things.
| derefr wrote:
| The journalist has more attention to spare, though,
| because extracting meaning from opaque text is, in large
| part, _their job_ --the thing they're putting intentional
| focus and man-hours into; rather than something they're
| doing half-heartedly + absent-mindedly + in fits-and-
| starts as procrastination _from_ their job.
|
| Certainly, as a dabbler in a lot of scientific fields, I
| might make fewer _errors_ in comprehension than a typical
| journalist "on the science beat" who doesn't actually
| get much immersion in science.
|
| But, as someone who comes across this journal paper while
| scrolling HN on the bus and knows I get off at the next
| stop, I more-likely-than-not just won't pick up /
| comprehend _any_ useful facts from reading the scientific
| abstract, before I get up and forget about the open tab,
| never coming back to it again. Whereas skimming a few
| paragraphs of an editorialized version of the paper,
| might be enough to at least let me absorb a nonzero
| amount of information, in that same distracted two
| minutes. Even if I don 't absorb a precisely-correct +
| objective reiteration of the conclusion, then at least I
| might learn what the novel research method was, to the
| point that it piques my curiosity to go back and learn
| more later!
| whimsicalism wrote:
| I am generally surprised by the inability of journalists
| to grok research papers, but I think the age thing goes
| the other direction than what you suggest.
|
| General scientific/numeric literacy among people who
| don't work in science seems higher in the younger
| generation than the older to me.
| jltsiren wrote:
| As an active researcher, I'm not surprised at all. It's
| common enough that people in the same field but a
| different subfield cannot properly understand a published
| paper. The same is often true for people working in the
| same subfield but on different topics. Just read all the
| horror stories about Reviewer 2.
|
| With some scientific literacy, you may be able to
| understand the central claims made in a paper. Or you may
| misunderstand them, because you may not be aware of the
| specific meanings of some words that are also used in
| everyday language. You may not be familiar with the
| context the paper was written in or with the best
| practices in the field. Hence you may not see the
| implicit assumptions that were made or know the
| justifications for certain choices. Because you are not
| an expert in the topic, you may not see the immediate
| consequences of the claims and are likely to take them
| too literally.
|
| It doesn't help that the authors probably didn't
| understand the results fully either. Most papers are
| difficult to understand, because they discuss early
| insights rather than final results. Clarity often comes
| with a better understanding years after the initial
| publication.
| wahern wrote:
| Younger people will remember their college education
| better, which will also happen to be more up-to-date with
| contemporary perspectives and techniques. But that's
| knowledge, not a skill. Good journalists rely on experts,
| and better journalists rely on multiple experts (for a
| topic, but also over time) to derive a sense of what's
| unknown and uncertain in a field.
|
| On social media nothing is ever unknown because there's
| always a large and emphatic group--some of whom will have
| PhDs, MDs, and other high-quality credentials--telling
| you with absolute certainty the way things are, and
| that's reflected in modern journalism. Not necessarily
| the certainty, per se, as outside academia the certainty
| of most information is inflated; but the shear breadth
| and depth of what's reported.
|
| To be clear, "young" to me includes people in their 30s
| and 40s, which also happens to be my age group. I've been
| watching in real-time the turnover over the past several
| years of radio journalists (NPR affiliates, etc) and
| print publications and I definitely see a change. The
| level of credulity is much too high, as is the level of
| partisanship. For nearly 15 years I disagreed vehemently
| with claims that such outlets were too partisan
| (notwithstanding FOX News and similar outlets), but over
| the past several years I can no longer sustain such
| defenses. The latest generation of journalists don't
| believe they're partisan because they believe the
| information they share is rooted in science, but real
| science is contingent, and the further away you get from
| hard science the greater the uncertainty in various
| claims, but because "science" discourse has become
| pseudo-religious and partisan the reality of this is
| lost.
|
| When you read a research paper, coming across the
| complexity and diversity of approaches and results is one
| of the most important aspects of the experience. It's
| difficult for experts, let alone journalists, to convey
| _uncertainty_ and _inconsistency_. That 's why it's so
| important, if you can, to read primary sources yourself.
| It doesn't matter whether you can understand the
| chemistry or calculus behind results. You can simply take
| the results and claims at face value, which in the vast
| majority of cases is how they'll be presented to you
| through the media. What matters is synthesizing the
| importance of the gaps that come into focus after reading
| many papers in a field.
| LocalPCGuy wrote:
| I don't think it's only just an age thing, although that
| probably is a large part of it. I also think media
| outlets have gotten to what seems like a more partisan
| stance as a reaction to the other networks pulling
| farther and farther away from truth and hard science. And
| I'm not saying they haven't changed, that it's only the
| far right fringes pulling farther away, but that the
| changes are reactionary and pull left-ward because of
| that action.
|
| Add in that youth tend to skew left and you get a bit of
| a perfect storm. I want to believe that the ecosystem is
| ripe for some sort of centrist, fact-based news
| reporting, but not sure there is a big enough audience,
| unfortunately.
|
| And partly that is because the mainstream media outlets
| actually do a decent job of conveying the facts. It's
| just that it's 5min of every hour while the other 35 is
| talking heads "interpreting it for the layman". So if
| you're able to mentally sift through the bias and are
| willing to dig deeper yourself into other sources, you do
| get the basic information you need to become relatively
| fully educated. And I don't think that's the case these
| days with some of the more extreme networks.
|
| edit to add: I fully support your main point of
| encouraging people to read papers for themselves!
| idiotsecant wrote:
| Boy you sure linked some concepts here.
|
| The news isn't more partisan because young reporters are
| introducing some kind of hyper-partisanship. Young
| reporters are not in charge. Old money people are. Old
| money people see that hyper-partisanship makes money
| because old people with money enjoy consuming it.
|
| Young people are much, much less partisan on average than
| older media consumers and that isn't something new. The
| older you get the more entrenched, generally, you get in
| your views.
| wahern wrote:
| > Boy you sure linked some concepts here
|
| Certainly it's a very common habit among my generation
| and younger. Maybe not the bare habit of linking
| concepts, but the extent to which we all shoehorn a
| diverse array of concepts into a handful of narratives.
| I'm wary of making the same errors, though that of course
| doesn't mean I don't. Is a tough line to walk. But I'm
| not claiming to have any unique insight; my beef is with
| our manifest discourse, not with the beliefs people hold
| in their head.
|
| > Young people are much, much less partisan on average
| than older media consumers and that isn't something new.
|
| In relative terms, yes. But in absolute terms they can
| still become more partisan. There are newer, larger
| narratives that have come to dominate American discourse.
| (Similar phenomena is happening globally, though
| narratives differ.) These narratives tend to bifurcate
| and channel topics; people end up more firmly entrenched
| internalizing one set or another. The center--which is
| what we call the group who are less certain and/or able
| to move more freely between narratives--is shrinking. It
| all might simply be an effect of technology providing
| greater access to more sophisticated and diverse news and
| opinions, amplifying pre-existing effects. And I'm sure
| this is all history repeating or rhyming or whatever;
| doesn't make it any less frustrating.
|
| That's why I emphasize terms like uncertainty. There
| seems to be less room for uncertainty. Take climate
| change, for example. It's been bifurcated into truth or
| farce. You can't _just_ believe in the truth of
| anthropogenic climate change. There 's no significant
| discourse regarding preventions, mitigations, and
| remediations. There's no room for disagreement regarding
| the efficacy of particular methods--the narrative demands
| that you're either one side or another, which means you
| must tacitly accept all claims (even if contradictory)
| labeled as being on one or the other side. Eventually
| these narratives will shift as the reality of climate
| change become undeniable, but discourse and identity will
| still be bifurcated, perhaps even more strongly.
|
| We all may secretly harbor far more nuanced opinions. IME
| we all _do_ harbor more nuanced opinions. But that 's not
| reflected in our culture and institutions.
| neals wrote:
| Even better: The data is readily available in the world! All
| you need to do is a bit of research and travelling and you
| could come to a similar conclusion!
| usefulcat wrote:
| "Studies on each of these coronaviruses indicate that they jumped
| into our species from bats or other mammals."
|
| Has this been proven for covid 19? I thought it was still a
| theory at best.
| nradov wrote:
| The genome for SARS-CoV-2 shows strong evidence of passing
| through both bats and pangolins. But how it made the jump to
| humans is still unclear.
| justinator wrote:
| You eat them
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZY7x1166EQ
| newacct583 wrote:
| It remains a "theory" in all cases, except ones where we've
| managed to actually observe the jump.
|
| But yes: consensus among experts remains that this is a natural
| virus, precisely because (as per e.g. the linked article!) such
| pandemics are literally as old as life. We knew a big human
| pandemic was going to show up sooner or later, because it
| happens to some species or another every year or two.
|
| It's true we can't rule out the lab theory as much as we'd like
| to. There was a good WSJ article a few weeks back claiming that
| western intelligence sources knew about a disease cluster among
| staff at the lab which would be consistent with the start of
| the pandemic. That at least is something to hang the more
| conspiratorial hats on.
|
| But really, no one serious was "surprised" by covid in any
| meaningful way. It was going to happen.
| eplanit wrote:
| "It's true we can't rule out the lab theory as much as we'd
| like to."
|
| Why is it desirable to rule it out? It's not only plausible,
| but the evidence seems to be accumulating, not diminishing.
| Thorough investigations seem very much warranted[1]. Let's
| not ignore the possibility because we wish such things
| can't/don't happen.
|
| [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/23/science/coronavirus-
| seque...
| newacct583 wrote:
| > the evidence seems to be accumulating, not diminishing
|
| It really isn't. We have one good report, and a lot of
| conspiratorial dot connecting and string tying that is
| _not_ good evidence and never was. It 's enough to keep you
| guys going, but you're never going to win this at this
| rate. Consensus sits on the mechanism that produced a
| thousand other diseases.
|
| And FWIW: of course it's desirable to reach a consensus.
| And it's decidedly _undesirable_ for a handful of nuts
| deciding to have Their Own Truth in yet another area.
| Because the more you distrust experts in favor of your own
| thought leaders, the more likely this is to happen in the
| future.
|
| To wit: Lab Leak Trutherism is of the same cloth as Big Lie
| election fraudurism, and climate denial, and 5G vaccine
| chipperism, and Storm Is Coming revisionism, and flat
| eartherism. It's one thing to investigate alternatives,
| it's quite another to keep flogging an unlikely theory
| because it fits your priors.
| eplanit wrote:
| You were making a good rebuttal until "To wit: Lab Leak
| Trutherism is of the same cloth as Big Lie election
| fraudurism, and climate denial, ...".
|
| I think we have nothing left to discuss.
| [deleted]
| nradov wrote:
| Another coronavirus epidemic probably hit 132 years ago.
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7252012/
| hulitu wrote:
| And another 10000 years ago. They found some human and bat
| remains in a cave.
| xmly wrote:
| And they were best friends by then?
| 1MachineElf wrote:
| Next, they brought them to Wuhan for analysis. /s
| ilrwbwrkhv wrote:
| cant read. paywalled
| xaduha wrote:
| 1. Load the page fully
|
| 2. Press reload button
|
| 3. Press Esc a few times before overlay shows up
|
| 4. ...
|
| 5. Profit
| safarii wrote:
| 4. It doesn't work because much of the article is missing.
| It's not just an overlay, it's behind a paywall.
|
| 5. Google what "paywalled" means
|
| 6. ...
|
| 7. Profit
| xaduha wrote:
| Works just fine, I can read it all and post a screenshot as
| proof, you gotta use it properly. But it might depend on
| location and IP.
|
| Did you register just to leave this remark? How odd.
| oumua_don17 wrote:
| https://archive.is/L0yoj Not paywalled
| HarryHirsch wrote:
| So - how did this virus spread through the population? 20 kyrs
| ago people didn't live in cities but in small bands of a few
| dozen people. It's easy to see how an epidemic might spread
| through a village but how would it move between isolated groups?
| autokad wrote:
| Human civilization was probably much more developed back then
| than 'experts' believe. Look at a satellite map, most of that
| light blue you see was land during that time. The East China
| sea was mostly land. You think people, like the majority of
| people, weren't living there?
|
| Just look at the gobekli tepe story.
| f6v wrote:
| The same way the infectious face cancer spreads among the
| Tasmanian devils.
| Florin_Andrei wrote:
| They were less "isolated" than you imagine. They traded with
| each other, intermarried, fought wars. You can see that in
| populations having a similar life style nowadays (there's very
| few of them now).
| CyberRabbi wrote:
| I'm not an expert but scientists have found that coronaviruses
| are aerosolized. So i think the process of aerosolization
| probably played a part.
|
| Source for reference:
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7293495/
| kadoban wrote:
| I don't think aerosolization matters when you're not in the
| same building and you're any reasonable distance away
| (certainly when you're miles away from the closest infected,
| you're safe, right?)
| tinus_hn wrote:
| And how did they ever survive, without masks, lockdowns and
| vaccines?
| Spellman wrote:
| With a lot of them dying?
| aj3 wrote:
| They didn't. That's what drives accumulation of specific
| mutations which are mentioned in the article. To be clear,
| large part of population died off (before they could
| reproduce) simply because they happened to get slightly more
| susceptible genes.
| f6v wrote:
| We also survived the Black Plague.
| HarryHirsch wrote:
| And people locked down and quarantined themselves. (Also
| Marseilles where a merchant wanted to unload a cargo of
| wool early, and that's how plague came to town.)
| outside1234 wrote:
| 50% of them didn't
| colechristensen wrote:
| Groups interacted with each other. A large reason that humans
| are found more or less everywhere on the planet was pressure
| from interacting with other humans.
| HarryHirsch wrote:
| They absolutely did but how frequently? The first villages in
| China are attested 7500 BCE, that's 10 kyr later, if the
| dating is correct.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > They absolutely did but how frequently? The first
| villages in China are attested 7500 BCE, that's 10 kyr
| later, if the dating is correct.
|
| There were obviously viruses before urbanization
| (especially given there are viruses that spread in wild
| animal populations), they probably just spread more slowly.
| At the minimum, there was probably regular deliberate
| contact/mixing between adjacent groups to avoid too much
| inbreeding, and that would imply other social contacts
| (e.g. an adult who married into another group returning
| home to catch up with his/her parents and old friends).
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fission%E2%80%93fusion_societ
| y...
| cyberlurker wrote:
| Nitpicking here, but there probably wasn't anything we
| would define as "marriage". That Wikipedia article says
| "copulate" instead. Now I want to go down the wiki rabbit
| hole about the history of human marriage.
|
| Also, I'd imagine there were at least far fewer viruses
| before urbanization. My understanding is early
| civilization was really good for diseases.
| gumby wrote:
| There are certainly older settlements (not just remains) in
| the americas, australiasia, India and of course Africa.
| Undoubtably older ones in China too, just no traces yet
| found.
|
| Genetic and linguistic studies demonstrate significant
| mixing of communities.
| Tainnor wrote:
| As far as I am aware, large meetings of different tribes
| did occur during the paleolithic at regular intervals,
| although not very frequently. In any case, such meetings
| don't have to be frequent for such a virus to spread once
| they do occur. The virus could have originated in a single
| tribe, killing some of the people and immunising others and
| then remained endemic in that tribe for years before they
| came into contact with others.
| bigpumpkin wrote:
| Maybe the virus was not a pandemic 20k years ago. Small tribes
| that carried genes that are resistant to the coronaviruses
| spread later on as they established larger communities/cities.
| williesleg wrote:
| Of course! It's on the internet it's true! Yay China!
| bigpumpkin wrote:
| Look at the infection/death rate in Southeast Asia. It strongly
| suggests past community transmissions of past coronaviruses.
| MikusR wrote:
| So China has discovered time travel?
| trasz wrote:
| Nah, must have stolen it from the US.
| TX0098812 wrote:
| Aren't coronaviruses pretty common...?
| colechristensen wrote:
| Yes, people seem to miss this. There are several mild endemic
| coronavirus diseases in humans, usually called "common cold"
| along with many others.
| shoto_io wrote:
| Yes. But then again they didn't start out as endemic virus
| but as a pandemic one. They probably wrecked a lot of havoc
| before becoming just a cold. Mayas and Aztecs can tell.
| Fomite wrote:
| Yes. They've also caused three major epidemics in the past two
| decades - there's no reason they shouldn't have emerged
| historically from time to time.
| Florin_Andrei wrote:
| So, a likely scenario is: a new virus appeared, it swept
| through the population, caused serious disease, a bunch of
| people died, the survivors had better resistance to it, it
| settled as a mostly innocuous thing (such as the common cold)
| or disappeared completely, and the next generations
| remembered it as "the plague of emperor Fancy Pants" or
| something.
| INGSOCIALITE wrote:
| Did it originate in China?
| binarymax wrote:
| _"It should make us worry," said David Enard, an evolutionary
| biologist at the University of Arizona who led the study, which
| was published on Thursday in the journal Current Biology. "What
| is going on right now might be going on for generations and
| generations."_
|
| Should it though? Seems like we've survived this many times as a
| species, and now have the technology to combat it! I'm more
| optimistic with this information, and hopefully we can eradicate
| coronavirus forever with mRNA and next-gen vaccinations.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| Yeah, I didn't quite understand why it should make us worry. We
| do have a lot more tools at our disposal than people had 20,000
| years ago - vaccines, antivirals (in a few years), knowing to
| social distance, etc.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Population density, commercial air travel.
|
| Social distancing is something that people even now are
| loathe to engage in, fortunately more and more people 'get
| it' but there are still plenty that do not. Arguably that's
| Darwin at work, but still.
| murgindrag wrote:
| Population is the big one. 7 billion people today means we
| have many times more opportunities for viruses to come up,
| combine, and mutate than we once did. I'm not sure which is
| the bigger phenomenon.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Other things we have today that mitigate spread:
|
| 1. sanitation
|
| 2. hand washing
|
| 3. understanding of how the disease spreads (not swamp gas)
|
| 4. knowing that throwing virgins into volcanoes does not work
|
| 5. clean water
| peter303 wrote:
| People lived in small groups most of the time. Harder to
| spread.
| _jal wrote:
| > Seems like we've survived this many times as a species
|
| I'm reasonably sure the species will survive climate change.
| Some nation states, civilizations and cultures' odds look more
| iffy.
|
| I think your bar for worry may be a bit higher than mine.
| e40 wrote:
| And specifically about a pandemic, even if 50% of humans died
| in it the species would continue, but that would very much be
| something to worry about. Even at much lower percentages it
| would be worrying. Or the fact that it could continue for
| generations.
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| Fact it could continue? Or opinion it could continue?
| There's a significant difference. The latter is not
| science.
| zamalek wrote:
| Yeah, it's like surviving falling from an airplane. You
| technically survive, but life will be extremely different.
| luhn wrote:
| TIL you can likely survive a landing at terminal velocity
| just by orienting yourself feet-first and bending your
| knees.
| outside1234 wrote:
| And probably ending up being unable to walk.
|
| That's what the OP is getting at.
| Sebb767 wrote:
| Well, to be fair, you'll be unable to walk either way.
| [deleted]
| cosmie wrote:
| It's not the climate change that'll get us, but each other.
|
| Left to nature alone, we'd likely evolve and adapt and
| survive in some form or fashion. But the advancement of
| humanity has led to all kinds of ways we could do ourselves
| in if we put our minds to it.
|
| And those nation states and civilizations facing iffy odds
| aren't likely to go down quietly. In the throws of
| desperation, all bets are off (why care about stuff like
| MAD[1] when you're already facing imminent destruction by
| nature).
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_assured_destruction
| LatteLazy wrote:
| If 99.99% of people die, the species lives on, but everyone
| reading this is gone and so is civilisation.
| blocked_again wrote:
| Our great ancestors were not doing gain of function research on
| viruses. If countries continues to do gain of function research
| on viruses we might not last the next two or three decades. No
| labs are 100% failproof. And there have been multiple cases of
| leaks even from the top security BSL4 labs.
| 99_00 wrote:
| >Should it though?
|
| Yes of course it will. The mainstream narrative is that the
| virus came from a wet market. Wet markets are still open and
| there is no discussion about what to do about it. The most
| basic lessons and precautions are forbidden topics.
| lamontcg wrote:
| > Should it though?
|
| Fuck no. I'm really tired of these stories.
|
| (this is all directed at the author that put that "it should
| make us worry" quote in the NYT piece, not at any HN poster,
| but I really need to vent)
|
| The 1918 pandemic turned into seasonal influenza one we had
| enough herd immunity, enough people had T-cells that recognized
| H1N1 and the virus was forced into making sacrificial choices
| in order to spread.
|
| This virus will not achieve an escape mutation that puts us
| back to square one with vaccinated or recovered people at the
| same risk everyone was at in 2019.
|
| If you look at what happened in 2009 the H1 envelope protein of
| that virus traces its lineage back to the 1918 pandemic, it
| spent 50 years mutating in pigs before it jumped back to humans
| (that is a LOT of generations of fucking "variants") and people
| who were born and exposed to pre-1957 H1N1 when it was endemic
| to the human race had cross reactive T-cells which protected
| them. They still got infected, but the disease burden was
| vastly lower so that pandemic fizzled:
|
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21653752/
|
| The human immune system isn't a binary on/off switch, and while
| circulating neutralizing antibodies are the gold standard of
| immunity they are far from the entire story.
|
| If you want to read an article supporting the idea that the
| coronavirus will transition to milder endemicity without all
| the irritated swearing read this:
|
| https://science.sciencemag.org/content/371/6530/741
|
| And everyone can fuck off in advance about the idea that ADE
| will happen. If it was going to happen it would have already
| happened and this isn't Dengue:
|
| https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2021/02/12/an...
|
| All the fucking headlines about how 99% of the people who are
| dying now are unvaccinated are screaming out that there's no
| fucking ADE anywhere to be found. People still talking about
| ADE need to see a psychiatrist to deal with their addiction to
| doom and gloom.
|
| This pandemic is ending. I'm 2 months post vaccination and
| everyone I'm in close contact with is vaccinated, so its pretty
| much entirely over for me.
|
| Now I need a fucking snickers bar.
| LocalPCGuy wrote:
| I generally agree with you (minus the rage) and agree re:
| being vaccinated at this point means it's pretty much over
| for individuals and their associates who are also vaccinated.
|
| The only quibble I take is that, while it's likely you (and
| by proxy, the experts you cite) are correct that we won't go
| back to square one, it is still a (low) possibility. Probably
| low enough that it isn't worth concerning yourself with,
| except to be aware that the possibility is there. And
| probably slightly higher than the normal chance of a random
| breakout until we get closer to vaccinated herd immunity
| worldwide. But I'm not suggesting it should necessarily
| change any significant behavior of those vaccinated, just
| something to pay a bit more attention to than normal and be
| ready to take action if needed (i.e. don't throw away all the
| masks just yet).
|
| And that said, I really appreciate you including sources and
| I'm sorry I don't have any handy to back up my statement, but
| it does come from reading and listening to experts. That
| said, it's my recollection and summary of that so I'd
| encourage anyone to take it with that grain of salt.
| lamontcg wrote:
| > it is still a (low) possibility.
|
| It really isn't.
|
| An escape mutation which completely evaded T-cells would
| write a whole new chapter in immunology.
|
| It on par with worrying about a jet engine falling on my
| head right now.
|
| There's risks that are low enough that they aren't worth
| worrying about or particularly acknowledging.
| LocalPCGuy wrote:
| From what I've read, the possibility is higher than some
| other random virus popping up at this moment in time.
| That's all I'm saying. That could be on par with the jet
| engine example, but if so, then all the people saying we
| need to learn from Covid and adjust our immunology
| strategies are worrying about low possibility items also.
|
| Anyways, I'll defer to you on this, I'm definitely not an
| expert, and you were willing to post sources and I'm not
| gonna try to dredge up the information I'm basing these
| comments on. Plus I haven't had the time to digest the
| sources. So add one more chink in my wall of being back
| to "normalcy" :P
| noduerme wrote:
| "If you look at what happened in 2019 the H1 envelope
| protein..." was that date a typo?
| lamontcg wrote:
| Yeah I used 2019 the paragraph before and had a mental bit
| flipping mistake.
| subsubzero wrote:
| I think whats going on here are people are fatigued with covid
| related news and in the news in general. News publications are
| terrified and putting out these scaremongering stories to get
| people hooked again.
|
| Just like the 1917/1918 swine flu didn't last for
| "generations"(meaning the potency of the virus was extremely
| deadly) this covid virus will do the same. It will def. be
| around but not in the same potency as when it entered the world
| stage late 2019.
| f6v wrote:
| The last thing we should do is to be laid back about this or
| next viruses. If we don't use the momentum to reduce vaccine
| rollout times among other things - we failed.
| jeremyjh wrote:
| > Should it though? Seems like we've survived
|
| Someone survived - but for the mutations to have a selection
| benefit strong enough to dominate that gene pool there would
| have to be more people who didn't survive than did.
| nradov wrote:
| Not necessarily. Even a virus with a low infection fatality
| rate could have caused significant evolutionary changes if it
| was endemic across many generations.
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| To your point: "...who led the study and is now seeking
| notoriety and additional funding..."
|
| While I hate to sound like a cynic, this is the human side of
| science time and again. The fact that too many "journalists"
| don't recognize the context only makes matters worse.
|
| To that I'll editorialize and add, key word "might." Such
| unsubstantiated hyperbol only makes the source even more
| suspect.
| ArkanExplorer wrote:
| For COVID to have an impact on the gene pool, it would have to be
| killing people within reproductive age.
|
| As of February 2021, only 11,000 people in the USA under 45 died
| of COVID - and most would have been very sick with existing
| health conditions and unable to reproduce anyway.
|
| There are 193,000,000 people in the USA in this age range, so the
| death risk from COVID is 0.006%
|
| COVID is of no threat to young and healthy people so there will
| be no impact visible genetically.
| viach wrote:
| Is it a best practice nowadays to use word "coronavirus" for all
| the viruses with the particular molecular structure pattern
| instead of word "flu"?
| zeven7 wrote:
| Well, it's not influenza...
| Majromax wrote:
| It's best practice to use "coronavirus" for coronaviruses, and
| "flu" for influenza.
|
| While they can cause similar symptoms, they are very different
| diseases, caused by viruses that have no particular genetic
| link.
| 8note wrote:
| Flu viruses are usually described more specifically too: H1N5
| and the like
| newacct583 wrote:
| It's absolutely _not_ appropriate to call these "flu". That is
| a contraction of "influenza", which is an entirely different
| family of viruses.
|
| And yes, the family is named "coronavirus". The one we're
| dealing with now is a strain properly calls SARS-Cov-2, which
| causes a disease officially termed COVID-19.
| imvetri wrote:
| Interesting. Ice age ended 10k years back.
| oumua_don17 wrote:
| Non pay walled: https://archive.is/L0yoj
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