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Experts are starting to hint at the possibility that the virus will mutate like the common flu and recur every year, so immunities will be redundant and vaccines unusable every year forever, this could be our new normal unless we eradicate it on a World scale



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newwil7l said:
If Covid-19 is similar to other coronaviruses immunity should last about 2-3 years. Here is to hoping.

Unfortunately we have these reports from Korea that people tested positive again after being declared recovered. Still not clear what went wrong there, this news seems to have fallen off the radar.



Rab said:
Experts are starting to hint at the possibility that the virus will mutate like the common flu ..

There is no need to hint. An english university has done partial gene sequencing on various corona patients. It turns out they can separate people into types A, B, C. Mostly: Type A are people from the USA and China, Type B from Europe, Type C from other areas. Type A is closely related to the bat virus, while types B and C are mutations. Interestingly, people from the Wuhan region are NOT type A, putting into question that the virus actually originated from Wuhan bats.

Even as research is running on highest gears everywhere, the virus still mostly is a mystery.



drkohler said:
Rab said:
Experts are starting to hint at the possibility that the virus will mutate like the common flu ..

There is no need to hint. An english university has done partial gene sequencing on various corona patients. It turns out they can separate people into types A, B, C. Mostly: Type A are people from the USA and China, Type B from Europe, Type C from other areas. Type A is closely related to the bat virus, while types B and C are mutations. Interestingly, people from the Wuhan region are NOT type A, putting into question that the virus actually originated from Wuhan bats.

Even as research is running on highest gears everywhere, the virus still mostly is a mystery.

There are at least 18 different strains already, all still small mutations, enough to track the virus but not to alter its behavior. Here is an animation of how the virus has spread over the world. https://nextstrain.org/ncov/global
It's not hard fact, just one interpretation of the data.




JRPGfan said:
S.Peelman said:
Here in the Netherlands they did a crude antibodies test by testing blood plasma donated by a number of people. It's not really conclusive, but they found that now about 3% of the people have generated antibodies which means about 3% of the population has had some kind of exposure to the virus. Out of a population of 17.5M that means that after all this time only 0.5M have some kind of defence against the virus. It's also the question in what capacity their antibodies will be effective. In any case, this is long ways from establishing group immunity, the downside of lockdowns. Maybe the Swedish approach isn't so bad.

Yes I just saw that talked about in a video of Dr John Campbell.

3% of population = 519k.

 ~3700 deaths  / 519k  x 100% = ~0,71%


^ theres a big margin of error though, depending on how accurate you guys counted your deaths.
If theres like another 1500 deaths you guys have yet to count (in say nurseing homes or such), it'll change things alot.

However I suspect its higher.
Netherlands has reported ~250 recovered and ~3700 deaths.
You guys have too many people still in hospital, that its too early to say or accurately claim to know "real" death rate of this virus.

Right now, its looking like its ~0.71%

However you need to factor in, dieing takes time.
Deaths always lag, even when looking at this type of math.

They don’t count recoveries here. In fact I don’t even know where worldometers got the 250 number from, should be zero, or a ‘-‘ like Wikipedia has (or had, didn’t check there in a while). The number of recoveries is much higher than 250 in actuality though, the amount of people in hospitals and ICU have been steadily declining for almost two weeks now, and then there’s the non-hospitalized mild cases. At the moment there’s still about 1100 people in ICU. The death number could be a bit higher, but not by much, here they’ve already been counting deaths outside hospitals so there won’t be a big correction like we saw in France for example. The main statistics agency has pointed out an increase in average weekly deaths compared to other years slightly beyond the counted Coronavirus deaths, that are unaccounted for though.

Last edited by S.Peelman - on 20 April 2020

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KiigelHeart said:
John2290 said:

Look at the mortality rate in closed cases, that is what unprepardness and ignorance of the situation does. 2 in every three people dead, fuck those odds. 

Look at the mortality rate in closed cases in Norway, Netherlands and Ireland for example. Fuck THOSE odds. 

Or don't. It's basically useless to look at those stats at the moment.

Yeah, like I explained in the post above, they don’t count recoveries, at all, here so the death/cure ratio is not usable.



S.Peelman said:
JRPGfan said:

Yes I just saw that talked about in a video of Dr John Campbell.

3% of population = 519k.

 ~3700 deaths  / 519k  x 100% = ~0,71%


^ theres a big margin of error though, depending on how accurate you guys counted your deaths.
If theres like another 1500 deaths you guys have yet to count (in say nurseing homes or such), it'll change things alot.

However I suspect its higher.
Netherlands has reported ~250 recovered and ~3700 deaths.
You guys have too many people still in hospital, that its too early to say or accurately claim to know "real" death rate of this virus.

Right now, its looking like its ~0.71%

However you need to factor in, dieing takes time.
Deaths always lag, even when looking at this type of math.

They don’t count recoveries here. In fact I don’t even know where worldometers got the 250 number from, should be zero, or a ‘-‘ like Wikipedia has (or had, didn’t check there in a while). The number of recoveries is much higher than 250 in actuality though, the amount of people in hospitals and ICU have been steadily declining for almost two weeks now, and then there’s the non-hospitalized mild cases. At the moment there’s still about 1100 people in ICU. The death number could be a bit higher, but not by much, here they’ve already been counting deaths outside hospitals so there won’t be a big correction like we saw in France for example. The main statistics agency has pointed out an increase in average weekly deaths compared to other years slightly beyond the counted Coronavirus deaths, that are unaccounted for though.

When its all said and done, its probably around 1%.
(In the western world, with proper healthcare)

But like others have said, theres now a few differnt strains and many many mutations within each "main" strain.
On Iceland they tested and found over 40+ mutations within a strain they had on the island.

On Faroe Islands, they found 2 differnt main strains (just like the chinese talked about), and found one was barely spreading (ei. you could kiss someone and not easily get it), while another was spread basically just walking by someone else infected breathing.

So how dangerous this virus is, *could* also depend on which version of it you get.

Rab said:
Experts are starting to hint at the possibility that the virus will mutate like the common flu and recur every year, so immunities will be redundant and vaccines unusable every year forever, this could be our new normal unless we eradicate it on a World scale

This would suck sooooooooooo much.
I hope next wave, we have enough PPE, and test & track early.
Maybe just catch the infected, and keep them away from the rest of us.

Goverments around the world better learn from this experiance.
(we need testing at borders, and on airplanes too)

Last edited by JRPGfan - on 20 April 2020

drkohler said:
newwil7l said:
If Covid-19 is similar to other coronaviruses immunity should last about 2-3 years. Here is to hoping.

Unfortunately we have these reports from Korea that people tested positive again after being declared recovered. Still not clear what went wrong there, this news seems to have fallen off the radar.

You need to follow more news then. There have been constant cases where the virus occurred after a patient was declared cured. The current consensus among experts is that it is not a reinfection, but rather a reactivation. That just means out current method of determining a cured covid19 is not accurate enough.



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JRPGfan said:

We dont even have proof you get immunity yet (most assume you do though).
We dont know how long it lasts (in general) if it does.
Even if immunity works, if the virus mutates, then next year, your "herd immunity" might not mean anything.... same problem can hit again.

Agreed. here is a video explaining the immunity situation in different illnesses: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylot5uGyyLA



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Ka-pi96 said:
Rab said:
Experts are starting to hint at the possibility that the virus will mutate like the common flu and recur every year, so immunities will be redundant and vaccines unusable every year forever, this could be our new normal unless we eradicate it on a World scale

The flu has a vaccine that's used every year though. I don't know if they need to change it slightly or whatever, but regardless there is a yearly flu vaccine. It's even given out for free every year in the UK to vulnerable/elderly people.

Yes they need to change it every year and even make an educated guess which vaccine to use. Sometimes it doesn't even work well, sometimes it does. I expect we see something similar with corona in the future. 

Unless they rush this new RNA-vaccine without proper testing and we all die of course :P