Re: Horizontal gene transfer HGT

Evolution does depend on heritable changes appearing between generations, and to that extent mutations and gene swapping are necessary. Almost every change is for the worst, because they are random changes, so there is evolutionary pressure to minimise the number of changes.

If we ever get to the point of being able to do intelligent design - which presumably includes setting up a biological equivalent of LTSpice - we could probably junk the random mutation feature, or at least monitor embryo's early for dangerous mutations and abort before care started getting expensive.

They may not be perfectly random looked at in terms of the atom rearrangements, but in term of the effect on the next generation the consequences are close enough to random for all practical purposes

And this is recorded in the peer-reviewed literature?

In which fantasy universe is this happening?

It's still killing people in Australia

It isn't so far off true.

The newer strains are much more infectious that the original wild form and by comparison with delta which was twice as deadly as the initial wild form the newer ones are comparatively mild (especially into a now mostly vaccinated population).

The evolution of the strains with time is a matter of public record. The original wild form is essentially toast now although one of its descendents from a year ago still seems to be going.

Successful strains so far have lasted around 12 months or less as top dog. The pattern this year is that cases are falling in UK summer. (that didn't happen last year at all - it stayed pretty high then)

Shows the prevalence of strains from April 22. BA.1 is now toast as are all the strains that preceded it. XBB and XBB.1.5 are in the ascendant.

And so is influenza and at about the same rate in all probability. It is much less of a threat to healthy individuals than it once was.

Vaccination has put it in about the same ballpark as flu. Yes it will kill people (especially those who are not vaccinated or have immune defficiency or other comorbidities) but it is no longer a major threat.

The current circulating strains are less virulent than the early forms. Also the medics are a lot better at treating it.

Still no evidence that it did anything to Covid-19

It didn't. Vaccination reduced the number of people killed - not that Covid-19 killed more than a few percent at any stage of the pandemic.

They weren't. Vaccination cover in old peoples homes and remote indigenous communities hasn't been great and the people who live there aren't in great health to start with, but they aren't the only people killed by any means.

Covid-19 is still striking down people in the prime of life, but mainly those who have evaded vaccination.

"Paxlovid and other COVID-19 therapeutics are now widely available in high-income countries." which can make a difference.

I had the Moderna Bivalent vaccine last November. It is more effective against the newer strains

Of course it does. Any living thing that mutates exploits the occasional favourable mutation.

So what. They are still random in their effect on the viral fitness.

The virus doesn't seem to be becoming any less virulent. It's certainly becoming moire infectious, because that's what selection does, but there's no selective pressure for it to become more or less lethal. You are confusing the falling death rate - caused by wide-spread vaccination - with a decline in the virulence of the virus.

So everything you post is null and void? Not entirely true, but close enough for government work.

Of course you aren't. You'd lose.

It coincided with most of the infected being vaccinated. The people who died were mostly unvaccinated, even when large chunks of the population had been vaccinated.

When the disease first appeared there were some suggestions that it killed up to 10% of the people that it infected, but as the diagnostic tools got reasonably effective the estimates got more realistic, though it was clearly more likely to killed you if you were older, and only the elderly ran that kind of risk.

A bizarre statement unsupported by any evidence at all.

Only if they were 85+ and had three or more comorbidities in addition!

That is utter rubbish. Worst case estimate was 3% from China. Right from the outset it looked like it hospitalised about 5% and killed 1% leaving some of the more unlucky survivors permanently maimed by the experience.

This is a post I made based on the available data at the time for the Oxford group run by Spiegelhalter:

The people who it damaged by deep lung infection are really badly harmed and don't seem to recover. Annoyingly their afflictions only really show up on the most exotic xenon contrast agent enhanced MRI scans. Their lungs look normal on a standard scan but some parts just don't do gas exchange any more due to scar tissue (which looks identical on MRI).

It was 1% for the entire population and risk doubled for every 8 years older you get. I remember it well because my personal risk was about 1%.

Vaccination cut the risk of dying if infected by more than an order of magnitude which is quite an impressive result. Fergusson was right (or even a bit optimistic) - if the UK had continued on a business as usual path we would have killed at least 600k as it was we have killed >200k. (even with a very successful vaccination programme)

The UK Covid infection pattern has now reverted to the original dies out in summer regime which characterised the first two years. It was a serious issue in July 2021 when it became able to spread like wildfire even in midsummer conditions and then oscillated for two years.

Only Covid admissions to healthcare are reliable in the UK now:

There was a point in the pandemic vaccination programme when most of the incredibly vulnerable and frail had been vaccinated and the rest of us younger and more robust hadn't where the majority of deaths were in the vaccinated cohort.

The disease remained invisible for a while early on when it was largely circulating in the young fit ski set who frequented northern Italy. My first probable exposure to Covid was in February when someone I knew came back from their ski holiday with no sense of smell and a funny dry cough. We got away with it but had no idea it was Covid at the time.

If they were very unlucky and belonged to the 10% that got complications then things were different but the majority had either no symptoms, just loss of smell/taste or something a bit like a common cold.

Regions not far from me were remarkably Covid hot because of the young ski set but had comparatively few fatalities mostly of the elderly grandparents of the people who brought it home with them.