COVID-19 Outbreak (Update: More than 2.9M cases and 132,313 deaths in US)

SharonT said

So, if there is a less-lethal strain hitting certain parts of the world (or US) and that strain winds up giving immunity to the other strains, would it make sense to promote exposure?

The strain could be the variable, and makes all the crowing about 'good response' and obsession with 'they're lying' all the more ridiculous.

Click to expand...

Note that the strain study that is being referenced here is based on data and samples that have aged a bit - I think the take-away from it is that this virus mutates very commonly (as RNA viruses do, but apparently some conoraviruses don't mutate as often) and that the mutations do have consequences on the pathology. But there are likely scores of additional identifiable strains since that study. I still think that in general, it looks like the mutations move toward less pathology (more benign).

While prevalence of strains with higher viral load based on region was part of the conclusions from the study, I don't know if that means we can presume that that regional prevalence remains over extended periods of time, as the mutation cycle continues. It certainly bears more study.

Higher viral load doesn't necessarily mean more severe infection - I don't think it does at least. But it does mean greater ease of transmission. I think what I'm getting at is that it's probably not as simple as concluding that prevalence of possibly more intense strains elsewhere means that we should try to encourage spread of a (possibly) more benign strain locally. We still have a high degree of seriousness (relative to other seasonal viruses) and we don't yet know how immunity works with respect to the spectrum of strains.