Corona Proof of alien life?!

[Jacke]

5 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

Also, viruses that tend to be 'too successful' at killing hosts lose because its not in their 'interest' to die out with the host; instead they want to keep hosts active and alive and shedding.

Evolution is blind and can only work with the mutations that come up.  Whichever is more reproductively beneficial gets selected.

EDIT: More exactly, whichever is more reproductively benefiicial under the current conditions gets selected.  Evolution both can moves the goal posts of "more reproductively beneficial" as well as chases the changes caused by other factors, like the climate, the environment, competing organisms, etc.

That means diseases will usually become more infectious.  But whether they become more destructive is complex.  Sometimes it's more reproductively advantageous to become more virulant, sometimes it's better to become less virulant.  As we don't know the full circumstances, it's hard to predict.  In the long run, with several mutations, it's usually better to become less virulant and co-exist.  But in the short term, that's not always so.

Edited January 4, 2022 by Jacke

[DDE]

2 hours ago, MKI said:

To expand on this, would it be possible to technically create a vaccine for all the coronaviruses this way? I believe I've heard some news stories about a "super vaccine" that can protect against all types of coronaviruses, using the same technology as the COVID vaccines. Plug and play indeed.

23 minutes ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

Walter Reed (Army) has a super-vaccine ready and in-the works (meaning awaiting human trials) that apparently works against Original Covid, all variants, SARS, MERS and some flu bugs.  If factual, it would be a wonder-drug.

US Army Creates Single Vaccine Against All COVID & SARS Variants, Researchers Say - Defense One

It would also not be profitable for the vaccine manufacturers, if the population gets a one-and-done solution.  Much better to keep people on something expensive that they can dole out every year or 4-5 months (even better) for ever and ever and ever.

Spoiler

Flu vaccine manufacturers:

A word of caution: this one seems to make sense, but anti-everything vaccines have previously been a subject of an attempted grift in the US biodefense establishment.  Kanatzhan "Ken"/"Kenneth" Alibekov spent most of the US's 2000s bioweapons bonanza running around trying to get funding for his idee fixe, an anti-everything vaccine or medication, which at least seemed a logical step from his descriptions of Soviet experiments in Ebola-smallpox chimerae and other horrors - only eventually his colleagues decided he was spinning tall tales.

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2007-jul-01-na-alibek1-story.html

After money laundering charges in Ukraine, and being chased out of a government oncology research sinecure in Kazakhstan, he's back in the US trying to... cure autism with antiretrovirals.

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

4 hours ago, K^2 said:

zombie fungus,

Something like that would be horrible.

Fungi amaze and repel me at the same time.  I remember reading somewhere that the substance the zombie fungus uses is chemically similar to psylocibin.

Another fun fact for the day.

 

Your point about direct transmission is valid: unlikely to be a first contact problem.  However, should we find Earth 2.0, presumably our chickens, pigs, cows and other 'food' will be rooting around in the dirt, perhaps cohabitating with local fauna - and local fauna being domesticated or eaten... with enough contacts?  It's just a matter of time.

4 hours ago, DDE said:

Alibekov

I remember hearing about that guy in the early 90s.  Lot's of 'big bogeyman' stories, proliferation worries, etc.  There was, if I recall correctly, a reasonable reason to pay attention and if nothing else see if there was anything to the tales.

But the talk died off.

I was unaware of the later stuff - thanks for the link!

[K^2]

11 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

However, should we find Earth 2.0, presumably our chickens, pigs, cows and other 'food' will be rooting around in the dirt, perhaps cohabitating with local fauna - and local fauna being domesticated or eaten... with enough contacts?  It's just a matter of time.

This is all still based on common origin of the life forms. I don't think it's a risk outside of Sol. With life that emerged independently from ours, viruses aren't a concern. Even if the transcription chemistry our life uses happens to be common, the number of possible permutations of various components is mind boggling, and for the most part, arbitrary. Parasites and bacterial/fungal infections might be a concern, but not viruses.

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

24 minutes ago, K^2 said:

This is all still based on common origin of the life forms. I don't think it's a risk outside of Sol. With life that emerged independently from ours, viruses aren't a concern. Even if the transcription chemistry our life uses happens to be common, the number of possible permutations of various components is mind boggling, and for the most part, arbitrary. Parasites and bacterial/fungal infections might be a concern, but not viruses.

Yeah - I hear you. 

I'm just of the opinion that if panspermia is a thing - the only way it would work is by following the adage of complex structures can arise from the application of simple rules.  Distinct from the 'everything is seeded from some ancient garden of eden planet'.  Thus if RNA and DNA are simple and almost inevitably forming given the right conditions... There should be life out there that we will recognize as life. 

 

(as opposed to silicon based rock trolls, crystal people, Psychlos, etc) 

[kerbiloid]

3 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

silicon based rock trolls

Silicone based rock trolls?

Spoiler

***

The covirus is an evidence of terrestrial life existence.

No host life - no virus.

[Scotius]

No, no. Those guys:

Sargeant Detritus and his Piecemaker FTW!!!

[sevenperforce]

3 hours ago, K^2 said:

And there has been a lot of eyes on genome of COVID-19. Not because anyone seriously thought it'd be alien in origin, but because people have seriously considered possibility that it has been lab-made. Or at least, lab-enhanced. So people have looked for any genome that didn't look natural in origin, and found nothing. So we can be pretty sure that this is just a natural series of mutation of an existing coronavirus that led us here.

Yep. A lot of people will make the argument "well prove it wasn't created in a lab" and that is very silly because you cannot prove a negative. However, you can still make a very good argument that if it had been created in a lab, then one of the many, many smart people examining it would have found traces, and since they haven't, it almost certainly wasn't.

Spoiler

There is a way it could have been created in a lab, but it requires a LOT of unlikely events and a fairly large (although not unrealistically large) conspiracy. If (a) someone was doing research they were specifically not supposed to be doing, and (b) they were more successful at it than anyone in history, and (c) they also happened to independently and simultaneously discover a way to do it without leaving any traces, and (d) they were smart enough to do all this but not smart enough to take steps to contain it, and (e) it was uncontained and yet they weren't the ones infected, and (f) they were able to enlist enough people for a coverup........then sure, maybe. But definitely not the most probable sequence of events.

 

3 hours ago, K^2 said:

21 hours ago, sevenperforce said:

An extraterrestrial alien virus would either wipe out literally all DNA-based life in a matter of weeks or it would never infect a single host. There would be no middle ground.

This part I completely disagree with. Even if an alien virus is capable of reproducing in terrestrial hosts, it's not adapted to them. There is such a multitude of viruses on this planet that while certain organisms have specific defenses against specific types of viruses, if we had no generic defenses that have to be bypassed with very specific attacks, all cellular life would be doomed. Human immune system specifically is exctremely good at detecting pathogens it cannot possibly be familiar with. Response to these isn't as rapid or reliable as against known pathogens, but it is still very, very good. And it's only because terrestrial viruses are specifically evolved to combat immune system of the host that they ever get by. An alien virus wouldn't have that advantage and would, in all likelihood, be easily picked up by our immune systems.

Well, honestly I misspoke -- I said virus but I was thinking of pathogens generally. I also was thinking of a non-DNA/RNA-based pathogen, simply because I don't find panspermia to be particularly likely. I find it more probable that abiogenesis occurs independently across the universe.

I don't think an alien virus would have any chance of reproducing using its ordinary infection route in terrestrial hosts, because I am assuming the code would be incompatible. What I was picturing was more like a grey goo scenario with an alien fungus or bacteria. You can imagine a type of extraterrestrial microbe for which any terrestrial cellular life is a rich source of nutrients, simply because of some unique chemical interaction. Life on earth typically uses proteins like keratin, chitin, or cellulose as its primary barrier, in part because DNA-based life does not readily and rapidly break those down. But if the alien ecosystem where this pathogen originated was not DNA-based, those proteins very well might look less like a barrier and more like a tasty snack.

18 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

Walter Reed (Army) has a super-vaccine ready and in-the works (meaning awaiting human trials) that apparently works against Original Covid, all variants, SARS, MERS and some flu bugs.  If factual, it would be a wonder-drug.

US Army Creates Single Vaccine Against All COVID & SARS Variants, Researchers Say - Defense One

It would also not be profitable for the vaccine manufacturers, if the population gets a one-and-done solution.

This will be great if it works, but it is not a wonder-drug. It is simply a more complex vaccine which includes multiple spike proteins on the same substrate. They added the omicron spike protein to this one, but when there is a future variant with a significant departure from omicron, they will have to go back and add its spike protein too. 

Also, this would not elicit any different type of immunity than what existing mRNA vaccines (or convalescent immunity) already provides. It wouldn't necessarily be longer-lasting or more robust immunity. You would still need two shots plus at least one booster; it is not one-and-done.

With some viruses, our immune system needs only one exposure and it will be immune forever (measles, mumps, smallpox), whereas with some the immunity lasts for a few decades (varicella, tetanus, diptheria) and with others only a few months or years at most (influenza, rhinoviruses, coronaviruses). And there are some viruses for which you never develop any immunity, like norovirus. And for each of those, immunity is not a constant or an on-off switch, but is a deterrent to infection that wanes slowly over time. Even with something like measles, vaccination or prior exposure doesn't magically make all your cells completely impervious to the virus. If you are re-exposed, the virus will still be able to penetrate the cell walls of the macrophages and dendritic cells it targets through the CD150 receptor. However, your antibody count is high enough that you will fight off that infection before it becomes significant, and your viral load will never grow high enough to spread it to someone else.

We don't know exactly why some diseases produce longer-lasting immunity than others. Part of it is the mutation rate; a virus that mutates quickly will be less susceptible to antibodies. Another part is severity; more serious diseases typically produce a stronger immune response and thus you have more antibodies. But that is not always the case. Norovirus can be quite serious but you never get immune; Hepatitis A is often very mild and doesn't produce much of an immune response but once you've had it you can't get it again, even if it was a mild infection.

Polio is a weird one. Most cases are asymptomatic, and you don't have any significant immune response, and you don't develop immunity. But in the very small percentage of cases that are symptomatic, it can be very serious, crippling, or life-threatening...but at least those people end up immune. And so children need 3-4 polio shots over a period of years in order to convince the body that it is serious enough to build up that lifelong immunity. Fortunately, polio has a low mutation rate.

SARS-CoV-2 just happens to have a nasty mix of a high mutation rate, a large number of asymptomatic or mild infections, and a dangerously high morbidity rate among those who do have serious illness. Plus, it's a coronavirus, which the immune system tends not to worry about because so many of them are harmless. The people who have mild infections don't develop many antibodies at all, and the antibodies that are produced (even from serious infections) wane more quickly than most.

23 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

It would also not be profitable for the vaccine manufacturers, if the population gets a one-and-done solution.  Much better to keep people on something expensive that they can dole out every year or 4-5 months (even better) for ever and ever and ever.

This is incorrect. Vaccines are not particularly expensive, and drug companies do not make a lot of money off of them. Drug companies make money off of licensing new drugs they develop; the more they innovate and develop new drugs, the higher their stock value becomes.

If a drug company figured out a way to make a one-and-done COVID vaccine that never needed a booster, their stock would soar through the roof and their stockholders would be very happy, and they would be able to hire even more scientists to work on even bigger problems.

7 hours ago, K^2 said:

With life that emerged independently from ours, viruses aren't a concern. Even if the transcription chemistry our life uses happens to be common, the number of possible permutations of various components is mind boggling, and for the most part, arbitrary. Parasites and bacterial/fungal infections might be a concern, but not viruses.

Yep, that was the point I was trying (and failing) to make above. For independently-evolved life, either it won't be able to infect at all, or will be through something like a bacterial or fungal path. 

[magnemoe]

23 hours ago, K^2 said:

Yeah, but it's something that evolves over time, not something that a virus will be able to turn on and off instantly. That's why the most deadly viruses are typically the ones that cross species. We aren't their target host, so they never evolved to keep us alive and merely sneezing. Of course, there are also viruses and parasites where killing the host is part of spread strategy. Rabies, zombie fungus, various parasites in fish...

Point is, if we were to get an alien virus that could successfully infect human host directly, which is honestly in sci-fi territory already, in my opinion, I can't think of any reason why it would be specifically deadly or not deadly. At that point, it's pretty much up to random interactions with completely new environment to that virus, some of which human body will correct for, and others it will not. This can be anything ranging from asymptomatic to the worst pandemic ever. But we are much more likely to get a virus like that from another species, one whose immune system is similar enough to ours. Like bats, or something. Case in point.

I guess being long lived has other  benefits as in parasites don't want to kill you as you are take time to replace, an virus targeting ants don't benefit much of keeping the host alive over time but wiping the hive would not be an benefit. 

And agree alien viruses would not work, yes we have bird virus affecting humans and they split off an long time ago but biochemistry is not that different. Having an virus affecting fungus hitting us would be weird. Now why should an alien ecosystem have our biochemistry and even if mostly compatible as its the best and easiest solution their animals would be as alien as fungus or more. Now this imply you could eat them and them us with exceptions. 
Viruses is more like hacking as I see it while bacteria is predators. 

[sevenperforce]

6 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

Thus if RNA and DNA are simple and almost inevitably forming given the right conditions... There should be life out there that we will recognize as life. 

I would say that polymeric nucleotide acids like RNA and DNA are fairly simple, and I do think that given the right conditions their emergence is almost inevitable, but I think that it is very very unlikely that an independent abiogenesis event would produce a polymeric nucleotide acid that has any substantial correspondence to RNA or DNA.

Sort of how the evolution of a phoneme-based written language is almost inevitable, but independently-evolved alphabets aren't going to look even remotely similar.

1 minute ago, magnemoe said:

Viruses is more like hacking as I see it while bacteria is predators. 

It's one of the reasons that anyone who knew anything about computers tore their optical nerves rolling their eyes at the alien computer virus in Independence Day. 

In other news, I had symptoms last night and my rapid test came back negative; my symptoms were worse this morning and I tested again and the rapid test came back positive. And I am double-vaxxed, recently boosted, and probably previously-infected before my first vaccine. Just goes to show how strong omicron's immune escape is. 

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

1 minute ago, sevenperforce said:

DNA.

Sort of how the evolution of a phoneme-based written language is almost inevitable, but independently-evolved alphabets aren't going to look even remotely similar

That is certainly one possibility - in fact a quite likely possibility. 

I've been reading lately about the transition of life from the oceans and seas to land, with bacteria, fungi, algae and lichens populating a very different terrestrial environment and creating the one we know today. 

Nothing says that some alien environment supporting life has to follow our pattern - but I'm guessing there will be more similarities than not if the environment and chemistry are substantially similar. 

Think of all the organs most animal life has in common - across class and phyla. It's possible that other solutions to the energy needs of plants and animals might arise elsewhere, but it's also possible that these are really simple solutions and why they are so prolific.  Muscle fiber comes in many forms - but in the end it's all mostly edible. 

Thing is - if the universe is a lot weirder than here... Then getting off this planet is a useless endeavor. 

[sevenperforce]

10 minutes ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

31 minutes ago, sevenperforce said:

Sort of how the evolution of a phoneme-based written language is almost inevitable, but independently-evolved alphabets aren't going to look even remotely similar

That is certainly one possibility - in fact a quite likely possibility. 

When you look more closely at DNA, it seems even more unlikely that independent abiogenesis would produce a polymeric nucleotide acid that was even remotely comparable to DNA. After all, DNA doesn't code for proteins directly; the four DNA bases code in triplets called codons for the 20 amino acids which make up life. Those 20 are a tiny subset of the 500+ amino acids which exist. Now, 4³ = 64, so many amino acids have two or even three codons which will produce them. But even so, this means that for an independently-evolved virus to have any compatibility with terrestrial life (such that our ribosomes could translate their alien viral code and produce their alien proteins), that independently-evolved life would need to:

1. Use most of the same 20 amino acids as life on Earth, rather than the 480+ other options. Otherwise it would be like trying to assemble a Lego spaceship out of Lincoln Logs. 
2. Use a double-helix rather than a single-helix or triple-helix nucleotide polymer. Otherwise it would be like trying to play a cassette tape with a record player.
3. Use phosphate as the nucleotide polymer backbone, rather than the many other possible backbones like aminoethylglycine. Otherwise it would be like trying to play an audio cassette tape in a VHS player.
4. Use the same four nucleobases as life on Earth, rather than the hundreds of other possible nucleobases. Otherwise it would be like trying to create words in English using Hebrew letters.
5. Have the same codon correspondence between most those nucleobases and most of the amino acids. Otherwise it would be like trying to write Spanish words if you only knew English.

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

1 hour ago, sevenperforce said:

Use most of the same 20 amino acids as life on Earth, rather than the 480+

Only quoting the one for brevity - but I truly enjoy your analogies! 

My instinct tells me that the 'choice' of only certain amino acids out of such a large pool likely has to do with efficiency. 

"Origin-of-life scientists have long been drawn to intriguing questions surrounding the evolution of proteins. ‘Why does biology use 20 amino acids – why not 12 or 40? And why did nature choose these particular 20 amino acids?’ says Leman. ‘We discovered that there are purely chemical factors, based on higher polymerisation reactivity and fewer side reactions, that might have contributed to this selection process... "

https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/why-does-all-life-use-the-same-20-amino-acids/3010824.article

We may not yet know the reason - but there is a reason. 

The weird is certainly possible - but is it probable? 

[kerbiloid]

Watching these twenty chosen in wiki, the answer is obvious:

"It's as primitive as can be!.." (c) "Weird" Al Yankovic

Edited January 5, 2022 by kerbiloid

[KerikBalm]

On 1/3/2022 at 1:35 AM, Arugela said:

I don't know if there is a way this could be known. Would any other common testing tell us now after the fact that would have occurred? This person was cremated after death.

Actually have they checked this sort of thing out in general to make sure it doesn't go back farther? By checking data going back a few months from when it started. Assuming anything would allow this to be found out.

Unless they have some blood samples, no.

If they have blood samples after the symptoms, then yes.

Similarly, there is speculation about spread during the 2019 world military games in Wuhan, which occurred in October 2019.

I had heard proposals of testing samples that were taken for drug testing purposes, or testing athletes afterwards for signs of exposure.

I have never heard of those tests being carried out or any results... which is strange in itself if the entities concerned really did want to pin down when and where it started

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

5 hours ago, KerikBalm said:

<If the entity in control of the region> really did want to pin down when and where it started

Heh. 

[sevenperforce]

Unrelated to extraterrestrial life, I would like to note that all of those people who were saying "omicron is more contagious but less severe" were full of it.

This sucks.

I mean, I'm not in the hospital -- but then again I was double vaxxed and boosted, so maybe that's why.

It really, really sucks.

[kerbiloid]

Without the obligatory QR codes how would you run the future hardwareless payment and quick renting systems?

Covid & QR. "Made" for each other!

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

14 hours ago, sevenperforce said:

I'm not in the hospital -- but then again I was double vaxxed and boosted

As news of Omicron started to spread about it in South Africa, I had the opportunity to chat with a virologist.  He said a couple of interesting things:

1.  The purpose of vaccination is not to prevent disease outright, but rather to prevent catastrophically bad disease.  The vaccinated can still get sick - but because of the vaccine, they don't die: their system has been primed to help them survive. 

2. Omicron is the solution to the anti-vax problem and herd immunity.  It is so transmissable that everyone who has thus far escaped infection is going to catch it.  'Hopefully, enough people have been vaccinated and already had the disease so that the course is short and deaths are low'. 

"What about those who've had it, the vaccinated and those with hybrid immunity (both had the disease and full vax + booster)?" 

Shrug.  "Weren't you listening?  There is no way to prevent infection - even among them... But those people should be fine." 

 

 

 

... 

 

 

And yes, Covid sucks.  A year after I caught it and my nose still doesn't work. 

[sevenperforce]

5 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

I had the opportunity to chat with a virologist.  He said a couple of interesting things:

1.  The purpose of vaccination is not to prevent disease outright, but rather to prevent catastrophically bad disease.  The vaccinated can still get sick - but because of the vaccine, they don't die: their system has been primed to help them survive. 

Yep. Now, many vaccinations prevent "catastrophically bad disease" by preventing infection/transmission in the first place. When Pfizer and Moderna first created the mRNA vaccines, they didn't know whether the vaccines would actually prevent infection/transmission or if they would merely reduce symptom severity and duration. That's why there was a lot of uncertainty at the beginning about who should get the vaccine first. If the vaccines prevented infection/transmission, then young healthy people who were most likely to be super-spreaders should have gotten it first. If the vaccines only prevented severe illness, then the most vulnerable should have gotten it first.

With past variants, the vaccines did both: they significantly reduced the risk of infection and they also significantly reduced the severity and duration of symptoms. With omicron, it appears that the vaccines only moderately reduce the risk of infection, but they still reduce the severity and duration of symptoms. Keep in mind that by shortening the duration of symptoms, you also reduce the risk of transmission, because even if vaccinated people with breakthrough infections have the same peak viral load, that peak doesn't last nearly as long and so they don't have as much of a chance to infect other people.

There are some vaccines which don't actually attempt to prevent infection at all. The tetanus vaccine (and the booster that you need every 10 years) doesn't produce antibodies against Clostridium tetani, the bacteria that causes tetanus; it only produces antibodies against the toxin that C. tetani creates. So if you step on a rusty nail, C. tetani will still infect you just the same, but your body will quickly destroy the toxin that makes it harmful, and then your general immune system will eventually get rid of the bacteria. The same is true for diphtheria; the vaccine creates antibodies to the toxin created by Corynebacterium diphtheriae, not to the bacteria itself.

5 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

2. Omicron is the solution to the anti-vax problem and herd immunity.  It is so transmissable that everyone who has thus far escaped infection is going to catch it.  'Hopefully, enough people have been vaccinated and already had the disease so that the course is short and deaths are low'. 

"What about those who've had it, the vaccinated and those with hybrid immunity (both had the disease and full vax + booster)?" 

Shrug.  "Weren't you listening?  There is no way to prevent infection - even among them... But those people should be fine." 

Well, I hope that works.

The problem is that SARS-CoV-2 mutates very rapidly, and people who are previously infected with one variant have little to no protection against the next. And so even if Omicron sweeps through the population rapidly and everyone ends up with hybrid immunity to Omicron (like I now have), we could still see another variant emerge that escapes that immunity and puts us back to where we were when Omicron emerged. 

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

2 hours ago, sevenperforce said:

puts us back to where we were when Omicron emerged

It won't.  

What will happen is covid will become as commonplace as the flu. 

 

Still kills a few each year, sometimes they get out the right vaccine, sometimes they don't... And few if any really worry about it 

[sevenperforce]

2 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

It won't.  

What will happen is covid will become as commonplace as the flu. 

Still kills a few each year, sometimes they get out the right vaccine, sometimes they don't... And few if any really worry about it 

That would be a better outcome than what the data shows right now, yes.

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

22 minutes ago, sevenperforce said:

what the data shows right now

What data are you referring to?

 

This is (mostly) what I hear:

"Every patient I’ve seen with Covid that’s had a 3rd ‘booster’ dose has had mild symptoms. By mild I mean mostly sore throat. Lots of sore throat. Also some fatigue, maybe some muscle pain. No difficulty breathing. No shortness of breath. All a little uncomfortable, but fine," Spencer wrote.

Omicron Symptoms in Vaccinated Adults: Sore Throat, Fatigue Common – NBC New York

“The more we see this virus transmitting around and really not causing serious illness, the more we may be getting to that phase where this virus becomes closer to other common viruses that we see out there that affect humans with very little serious or lethal consequences,” said Wilson.

“That could be what the future might look like. Periodically we have to wear a mask and then periodically we have to go get vaccines,” said Michael.

Researchers predict what will happen after omicron (abcactionnews.com)

 

[sevenperforce]

38 minutes ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

What data are you referring to?

This is (mostly) what I hear....

The data absolutely do suggest, at this point, that omicron is less deadly than the alpha, beta, or delta variants.  But it is still much more deadly than the flu. Excess deaths in South Africa are lower than they were with previous waves, but they are not just "a few" by any means.

Of course the flu was never "a few" either. People would always conflate actual influenza with "a stomach flu" or "the 24 hour flu" or random sinus infections. The actual flu kills an average of 36,000 Americans a year...more than three times the annual death toll of drunk driving in this country.

It is possible that people who have recovered from omicron and subsequently receive annual boosters are more or less immune. That would be nice. But we don't have the data to support that yet.

43 minutes ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

"Every patient I’ve seen with Covid that’s had a 3rd ‘booster’ dose has had mild symptoms. By mild I mean mostly sore throat. Lots of sore throat. Also some fatigue, maybe some muscle pain. No difficulty breathing. No shortness of breath. All a little uncomfortable, but fine."

Dr. Spencer makes a good point. In terms of observation, most people who have been fully vaccinated and recently boosted have minor symptoms. Or if they have only been fully vaccinated but not recently boosted, they're a lot more miserable but they don't need hospitalization. It's the people who are unvaccinated or are trusting "natural" immunity who end up on oxygen.

But also I can say from personal experience, having both had the flu subsequent to a flu shot and currently having omicron subsequent to a booster, that you do not f*&#ing want to have omicron if you can possibly avoid it. It really sucks.

I just have a strong knee-jerk reaction to anyone who is like "oh well, we'll all get it eventually." I mean, maybe? But I'm telling you, you don't want it. Even if you're fully vaxxed and boosted.

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

2 hours ago, sevenperforce said:

I'm telling you, you don't want it

I hear you; coming up on 1 year since I had it and still affected.