04-22-2020, 01:33 AM
kander - the 4/14 paper https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/...1.full.pdf seems to indicate that the new strains are in fact becoming more deadly.
That one was a bit of a slog due to all the technical wonk in there. As a general summary, they took various samples of the virus with different mutations, added them to some cells, and then tried to quantify their effects linking some changes such as viral load to these different mutations.
The few obvious caveats are it has not been peer reviewed (very few of these pre-prints have been holding up to scrutiny), results have not been replicated, and what happens in a cell line does not mean the same results are seen in vivo such as in animal studies or in people. There are also layers and layers of technical details that would need to be reviewed and verified from cell lines to imagery techniques to software used.
So they are initial lab results that point to some potential differences, each of which needs to be confirmed to hold true in the general population before being able to say the virus has dangerously mutated with worsening consequences.
That's my take, but it's really just the standard "slow down and do more and better science before making big proclamations" mantra that gets drilled into so you don't stick your foot in your mouth too much. Everyone wants to jump to grand conclusions (antibody tests show it's just the flu bro, mutations are leading to pneumoconio-sis) that the meager science done so far just can't support.
This event is really challenging the scientific community on how to do reliable, responsive, and responsible studies and public communication. While some strides have been made, there is still much than can be improved.
That one was a bit of a slog due to all the technical wonk in there. As a general summary, they took various samples of the virus with different mutations, added them to some cells, and then tried to quantify their effects linking some changes such as viral load to these different mutations.
The few obvious caveats are it has not been peer reviewed (very few of these pre-prints have been holding up to scrutiny), results have not been replicated, and what happens in a cell line does not mean the same results are seen in vivo such as in animal studies or in people. There are also layers and layers of technical details that would need to be reviewed and verified from cell lines to imagery techniques to software used.
So they are initial lab results that point to some potential differences, each of which needs to be confirmed to hold true in the general population before being able to say the virus has dangerously mutated with worsening consequences.
That's my take, but it's really just the standard "slow down and do more and better science before making big proclamations" mantra that gets drilled into so you don't stick your foot in your mouth too much. Everyone wants to jump to grand conclusions (antibody tests show it's just the flu bro, mutations are leading to pneumoconio-sis) that the meager science done so far just can't support.
This event is really challenging the scientific community on how to do reliable, responsive, and responsible studies and public communication. While some strides have been made, there is still much than can be improved.