Daniel Griffin provides a clinical update on COVID-19, then we review TETRIS by Paterson NJ, modeling the effects of intervention in the US on cases and deaths, mixing PCR and serology data, and much more, including listener email.
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Show notes at microbe.tv/twiv
What is the current thinking on selection pressures favoring milder and asymptomatic covid-19?
“Amherst College biologist Paul Ewald argues in his brilliant 1994 book, “Evolution of Infectious Diseases,†under normal circumstances the mildest offspring of any flu family will always triumph, because people who are infected with the worst strains go home and go to bed, whereas people infected with the mild strains go to work, ride the bus, and go to the movies. .. In 1918, Ewald says, these rules got inverted by the war. The Spanish flu turned nasty in the late summer in France. A mild strain of flu spreading from soldier to soldier in the trenches stayed in the trenches because none of the soldiers got so sick that they had to leave their posts. A debilitating strain, though, resulted in a soldier’s being shipped out in a crowded troop transport, then moved to an even more crowded hospital, where he had every opportunity to infect others.”
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1997/09/29/the-dead-zone