Naked Science Forum
Life Sciences => Cells, Microbes & Viruses => Topic started by: acsinuk on 25/05/2022 09:13:15
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Most of the elder generation will remember having a cow pox scratch as a child. It was given to immune you from small pox which is a far more serious disease . Attached is a Wikipedia article on cow pox. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cowpox .
Why is there a rumour being spread by TV that monkey pox could be the start of some sort of national epidemic when it could just be a pharmaceutical promotion for extra sales of their vaccines now that Covids are no longer necessary?
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Monkeypox is in the same virus family as smallpox and cowpox, and the smallpox vaccine is effective at reducing the severity of monkeypox.
The conspiracy theorists are all over this "convenient" handover from COVID to Monkeypox - and the proposed WHO treaty to extend pandemic surveillance beyond influenza to include other diseases with pandemic potential (like COVID and other zoonotic diseases).
Monkeypox is less contagious than smallpox (and much less lethal - this monkeypox strain is more like COVID, at around 2% fatality).
- But it does infect the lungs
- There are signs from the 2003 US outbreak that it did spread through aerosols from prairie dogs to humans
- The pox blisters contain viable virus, so contact with skin or clothing can cause an infection
- Unlike COVID, people are symptomatic before they are infectious, so test, track and trace with quarantine should be much more effective than with COVID (and the tracing teams will be more familiar with the process than they were in the early days of COVID!).
- Numbers are still small, and tracing is working, so we don't need to put on the masks just yet...
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orthopoxvirus
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" Could it be similar to cow pox and just a mild variant of small pox."
No.
That's why they call it by a different name.
Why is there a rumour being spread by TV
Because that's what news sellers do.
It makes money.
The real question is why are you spreading that silly idea here?
it could just be a pharmaceutical promotion for extra sales of their vaccines
There is no monkeypox vaccine.
The R value for covid was about 3. The R value for monkeypox is about 0.02
You can get outbreaks, but not a pandemic.
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It is some sort of less worrying virus from the same family as the smallpox virus, but as there has been a gap in the market for a pox virus and immunisation for smallpox is fading out.
Worrying thing about monkey pox is it varies between 1 and 10 percent lethality and mainly attacks the young.
I seem to remember some sort of illness doctor on this forum, he'd be more help.
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Monkeypox was documented decades ago; the name is misleading, because it's not actually an infection of monkeys; nor is chickenpox an infection of chickens, for that matter!
The natural host of this orthopoxvirus are rodents like rats, mice and squirrels. Periodically the agent jumps into bigger animals, including us and sometimes monkeys, and that's how it was detected decades ago and mislabelled as monkeypox.
But it is a highly evolved virus that is a close relative of vaccinia, cowpox and smallpox. Unsurprisingly, it produces similar symptoms in all of these, but because it is poorly evolved to infect humans, it tends to show limited spread and severity in us.
All viruses exploit opportunities afforded to them to spread. Something, or a range of factors - possibly declining global immunity against pox viruses in general - has provoked the present outbreak, which is probably fuelled by a superspreader event.
We anticipate more cases will be picked up, because we're on the lookout for it, but we don't anticipate widescale spread at the moment.
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I seem to remember some sort of illness doctor on this forum
The usual description is "medical".
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Wonder how effective the smallpox vaccines are after a few decades of being used, as I had the pressure injection at primary school, many years ago. But will say the Covid vaccines are pretty effective, still here, despite having had it likely at least twice, but both times a negative test result, which is still possible with the quick tests. Last one was just like a moderate case of flu, while those who are antivax seem to be selecting themselves for Darwin awards, with a very high probability of winning one.
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some sort of illness doctor on this forum
In his day job, Chris (Smith) is a virologist; he has a lab with gene sequencing equipment.
- This lab was very active during the COVID pandemic
- I am sure activity will increase again if Monkeypox reaches as far as Cambridge!
See the answer from Chris, above.
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Wonder how effective the smallpox vaccines are after a few decades of being used, as I had the pressure injection at primary school, many years ago. But will say the Covid vaccines are pretty effective, still here, despite having had it likely at least twice, but both times a negative test result, which is still possible with the quick tests. Last one was just like a moderate case of flu, while those who are antivax seem to be selecting themselves for Darwin awards, with a very high probability of winning one.
Darwin requires natural selection to take place before reproduction. Darwinism has failed to stop hereditary early age breast cancer or heart failure. some sort of illness doctor on this forum
In his day job, Chris (Smith) is a virologist; he has a lab with gene sequencing equipment.
- This lab was very active during the COVID pandemic
- I am sure activity will increase again if Monkeypox reaches as far as Cambridge!
See the answer from Chris, above.
I know. He's always introduced as such when making appearances on the national media.
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Wonder how effective the smallpox vaccines are after a few decades of being used, as I had the pressure injection at primary school, many years ago. But will say the Covid vaccines are pretty effective, still here, despite having had it likely at least twice, but both times a negative test result, which is still possible with the quick tests. Last one was just like a moderate case of flu, while those who are antivax seem to be selecting themselves for Darwin awards, with a very high probability of winning one.
Darwin requires natural selection to take place before reproduction. Darwinism has failed to stop hereditary early age breast cancer or heart failure.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin_Awards
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Wonder how effective the smallpox vaccines are after a few decades of being used, as I had the pressure injection at primary school, many years ago. But will say the Covid vaccines are pretty effective, still here, despite having had it likely at least twice, but both times a negative test result, which is still possible with the quick tests. Last one was just like a moderate case of flu, while those who are antivax seem to be selecting themselves for Darwin awards, with a very high probability of winning one.
Darwin requires natural selection to take place before reproduction. Darwinism has failed to stop hereditary early age breast cancer or heart failure.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin_Awards
Yes, the people under threat from corona are beyond biological reproductive age.
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There seems to be an assumption that covid has gone away. It is still spreading and mutating. It's unlikely to return as a variant with increased pathogenicity and/or the ability to evade current vaccines but it is a possibility. It's early days in the evolution of a fast evolving virus.
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I see that the infamous youtubing nurse has already floated the idea that the monkeypox outbreak is down to lab gain of fuction. Some people will do anything for the love of money.
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Yes, the people under threat from corona are beyond biological reproductive age.
My grandfather fathered his last child at the age of 84. Two friends who have been unable to work as pilots for the last 2 years thanks to "long COVID" are in their fifties, and would have died if they had not spotted the symptoms of hypoxia. I don't know any younger victims but there are plenty of examples of folk in their twenties still disabled by this odd disease.
But I defer to your superior medical knowledge.
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Yes, the people under threat from corona are beyond biological reproductive age.
At least for men, reproductive age is probably "under 75" and that range accounts for more than 50% of covid deaths.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-age-sex-demographics/
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. It's unlikely to return as a variant with increased pathogenicity and/or the ability to evade current vaccines
Why is that unlikely?
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Yes, the people under threat from corona are beyond biological reproductive age.
My grandfather fathered his last child at the age of 84. Two friends who have been unable to work as pilots for the last 2 years thanks to "long COVID" are in their fifties, and would have died if they had not spotted the symptoms of hypoxia. I don't know any younger victims but there are plenty of examples of folk in their twenties still disabled by this odd disease.
But I defer to your superior medical knowledge.
Yes there are isolated cases of men fathering children into their later years, but on the whole of it under 50s pervade. There are also a few cases of under 50s with no health conditions passing away from corona, but there are also cases of under 50 dying from bee stings or being hit by lightning. On the whole of it anybody threatened by corona is over 50.
Ironically the more you care about corona the less likely you are to breed, how many people will end up childless due to lockdowns and isolation now. If 20 year olds should dismiss corona, ignore the vaccine and rut like animals they are far more likely to procreate than those who have strict isolation wear masks and wait for a vaccine. My medical knowledge is clear enough on that.
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The reason men tend to father fewer children in their later years is due to declining opportunity, not fertility, as humans mostly copulate within a narrow age cohort and female fertility declines rapidly after age 40.
The UK birthrate has declined at about 0.45 - 0.50% per year since about 2000. There is no evidence that lockdown had any effect.
Always worth checking the facts before posting on a science forum.
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The reason men tend to father fewer children in their later years is due to declining opportunity, not fertility, as humans mostly copulate within a narrow age cohort and female fertility declines rapidly after age 40.
The UK birthrate has declined at about 0.45 - 0.50% per year since about 2000. There is no evidence that lockdown had any effect.
Always worth checking the facts before posting on a science forum.
The reason men tend to father fewer children in their later years is that a social norm has couples rasing children, couples coming usually from social events, those couples being similar in age. Couples will pass their biological reproductive age, repression of social interaction will lead to less children, a delayed effect similar to child development issues and cancer survival rates as seen lately. But that's sociology, a social science, no place on a technical science forum.
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Review your concept of the social norm. It has changed considerably in the last 50 years.
The repression of social interaction during COVID lockdowns had no effect on birthrate in the UK.
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Review your concept of the social norm. It has changed considerably in the last 50 years.
The repression of social interaction during COVID lockdowns had no effect on birthrate in the UK.
Point stands, majority of the genes removed from the gene pool will belong to the people concerned with corona.
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A bizarre supposition. Or perhaps just badly expressed.
The entirety of those killed by COVID (or indeed any disease) will be those who are susceptible to it.
Those people who are concerned about a disease will generally avoid contact with it or take some prophylactic or remedial measures, thus reducing the incidence or severity within that group.
UK COVID statistics are heavily biassed by the Secretary of State for Health's decision to kill nursing home residents early in the pandemic.
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Bored chemist asked why I consider it "unlikely......". Viruses and their hosts tend to co-exist in peace(for the want of a better term) after some time of mutual contact. It is no benefit to a virus for it's host to be killed as this is of little use for spreading. Those clades of the virus that are most transmissible coupled with minimum harm to the host will in general be the most numerous and will outcompete others. This already appears to be happening with covid. None of this is absolute and a genetic shift could cause mayhem. What really worries me is the propensity of influenza to suddenly change to a highly lethal pathogen: it has done it before and it's only a matter of time before it happens again.
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Bored chemist asked why I consider it "unlikely......". Viruses and their hosts tend to co-exist in peace(for the want of a better term) after some time of mutual contact. It is no benefit to a virus for it's host to be killed as this is of little use for spreading. Those clades of the virus that are most transmissible coupled with minimum harm to the host will in general be the most numerous and will outcompete others. This already appears to be happening with covid. None of this is absolute and a genetic shift could cause mayhem. What really worries me is the propensity of influenza to suddenly change to a highly lethal pathogen: it has done it before and it's only a matter of time before it happens again.
That's a common belief but it misses the mechanism.
A virus doesn't become less virulent by stopping to consider its ways.
It does it because a nasty strain dies out because it killed all its hosts.
That's not actually good news for people.
There's no "deliberate" direction of travel towards a less dangerous virus, and, in the short term, there's every chance that a variant will be more pathogenic.
And it is under phenomenal evolutionary pressure to "learn" to evade the vaccinations.
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Exactly, the ones most likely to die are weeded out. Either by dying, or because, by deliberate exposure to a vaccine, they now have a much improved immune response. Either way they adapted to it, and having a vaccine is a way to be on the not pushing up daisies curve. Here the majority of those dying are those who refused the vaccine, for various reasons, so yes natural selection at work. Currently the vast majority of those who were hospitalised were the unvaccinated, the ones who got one or more of the various vaccines survived with only minimal medical attention, though it has done a rather terrible amount of work in other transmissible endemic diseases, where they have been left on the back burner due to the big pandemic, and there the transmission and treatment have been very much out of the attention of any form of control. Unfortunately being either immune compromised, or with a infection that targets the lungs, the pandemic has been rather much damaging there.
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Bored chemist, I partly agree and partly disagree. Yes there is no deliberate drive in any direction, all changes arise from random transcription errors and a couple of base changes could alter characteristics dramatically. What I am saying is that over time the characteristics that include high infectivity+minimal host damage will be most favoured from simple evolutionary principles. A small number of our common cold viruses are corona viruses and it is thought that these may have been similar to covid originally and have evolved to be less pathogenic. However I am just saying what I think is probable, it could still all go pear-shaped .
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Bored chemist, I partly agree and partly disagree. Yes there is no deliberate drive in any direction, all changes arise from random transcription errors and a couple of base changes could alter characteristics dramatically. What I am saying is that over time the characteristics that include high infectivity+minimal host damage will be most favoured from simple evolutionary principles. A small number of our common cold viruses are corona viruses and it is thought that these may have been similar to covid originally and have evolved to be less pathogenic. However I am just saying what I think is probable, it could still all go pear-shaped .
Mutations have largely been touted as toward the more transmissible less lethal end of the spectrum. I am no expert but that is statistically the progress they make. As for the evolutionary path they take the lethality is not a factor I would think is most divisive, as seen with monkey pox a disease that does not cripple the host or have visible symptoms spreads better than one where the victim is a sickly invilid with repulsive pustules on their face. As to why they evolve to less lethal, I am unsure, smallpox aids etc do not seem to have followed this path.
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So long as the virus, bacterium can grow or replicate, and have a spread that includes more new hosts it will do so. The mutations that allow it to do so without killing the host outright do however with time come more common, simply because they are the ones that allow the host organism to also survive long enough to recreate itself. The more virulent ones kill off all the hosts and die out, limiting their spread.
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Sean,
That really is good news, so there can never be a serious pandemic as it will kill itself off naturally.
On reflection then should the world have panicked on news of Covid 19 when the evidence from the diamond princess cruise ship known within 2 months was that only 80% of the 4,500 passengers and staff fell ill and in the end only 11 all but 2 older people died???
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Sean's comment is only partially true. If an agent can infect a second host before the first becomes clinically symptomatic, it will flourish. That is the problem with COVID, several STDs, and potentially with monkeypox.
In the case of COVID, once the Secretary of State had ordained that he be infected it was the host's late immune response that killed him, and by the time clinical symptoms appeared each infected person could have infected several others.
Whether you blame the Benign Creator or evolution, that's how successful organisms from the common cold to the Nazi party do it.
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Sean,
That really is good news, so there can never be a serious pandemic as it will kill itself off naturally.
On reflection then should the world have panicked on news of Covid 19 when the evidence from the diamond princess cruise ship known within 2 months was that only 80% of the 4,500 passengers and staff fell ill and in the end only 11 all but 2 older people died???
Well, eventually with a severe pandemic most of the host population do eventually die away, laving only a very small number left who either survived it, or were naturally immune. No further spread because now the host population is more or less 99% gone, leaving only a tiny part left. Pandemics do eventually die out, often simply because there are no more hosts around, and both infection and host are no more, limiting the pandemic. Sucks if you are the host, but in the overall life of the planet, merely a blip in a 4 billion year plus cycle of events.
Might not even leave a long term fossil record either, as after all very few things get fossilised in great numbers, except for the most common fossil of them all, banded iron ore, a fossil of the greatest environmental catastrophe that ever was on the planet, in that it literally changed the composition of all the surface materials more or less permanently, and there are only a very few descendants of survivors of the previous inhabitants around.