Horizontal gene transfer HGT...

[Fred Bloggs]

On Monday, July 3, 2023 at 1:42:25 AM UTC-4, Anthony William Sloman wrote:

On Monday, July 3, 2023 at 12:41:40 AM UTC+10, John Larkin wrote:
On Sun, 2 Jul 2023 06:06:41 -0700 (PDT), Fred Bloggs
bloggs.fred...@gmail.com> wrote:
On Sunday, July 2, 2023 at 1:42:30?AM UTC-4, Jan Panteltje wrote:
Horizontal Gene Transfer HGT
Virus-like transposons wage war on the species barrier
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/06/230629193248.htm

Wow!

So do a lot of other processes. Transposons have been in serious study for decades and even used in genetic engineering. But there are barriers:

\" On the other hand, host organisms have developed different mechanisms of defense against high rates of transposon activity, including DNA-methylation to reduce TE expression [30-33], several RNA interference mediated mechanisms [34] mainly in the germ line [35, 36], or through the inactivation of transposon activity by the action of specific proteins [37-39].\"

And transposons can cause deletions in the DNA as easily as insertions..

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2874221/

Like mutation, gene swapping is useful, even necessary, but in moderation.
Evolution does depend on heritable changes appearing between generations, and to that extent mutations and gene swapping are necessary. Almost every change is for the worst, because they are random changes, so there is evolutionary pressure to minimise the number of changes.

If the mutation is of biological origin, it is NOT random. High energy cosmic particle, yes; biological, no. If you\'re not one of those weird nematodes, you don\'t need to worry about transposons.

If we ever get to the point of being able to do intelligent design - which presumably includes setting up a biological equivalent of LTSpice - we could probably junk the random mutation feature, or at least monitor embryo\'s early for dangerous mutations and abort before care started getting expensive.

The system is focused on self-preservation. Ideally ANYTHING out of the ordinary is destroyed. Talking about mutations, one form of immune response to pathogen infection is to mutate the pathogen RNA/ DNA in a way to make it less pathogenic, by way of mutagenic enzyme secretion. It\'s a two way street there. SARS-CoV-2 was mutated to become far less pathogenic and in a way to exponentially out-replicate the original strain, causing it to die out. The price for this was higher viral loads and therefore increased infectivity, but the infection was comparatively far less severe, almost innocuous.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Anthony William Sloman]

On Tuesday, July 4, 2023 at 1:39:57 AM UTC+10, Fred Bloggs wrote:

On Monday, July 3, 2023 at 1:42:25 AM UTC-4, Anthony William Sloman wrote:
On Monday, July 3, 2023 at 12:41:40 AM UTC+10, John Larkin wrote:
On Sun, 2 Jul 2023 06:06:41 -0700 (PDT), Fred Bloggs
bloggs.fred...@gmail.com> wrote:
On Sunday, July 2, 2023 at 1:42:30?AM UTC-4, Jan Panteltje wrote:
Horizontal Gene Transfer HGT
Virus-like transposons wage war on the species barrier
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/06/230629193248.htm

Wow!

So do a lot of other processes. Transposons have been in serious study for decades and even used in genetic engineering. But there are barriers:

\" On the other hand, host organisms have developed different mechanisms of defense against high rates of transposon activity, including DNA-methylation to reduce TE expression [30-33], several RNA interference mediated mechanisms [34] mainly in the germ line [35, 36], or through the inactivation of transposon activity by the action of specific proteins [37-39].\"

And transposons can cause deletions in the DNA as easily as insertions.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2874221/

Like mutation, gene swapping is useful, even necessary, but in moderation.

Evolution does depend on heritable changes appearing between generations, and to that extent mutations and gene swapping are necessary. Almost every change is for the worst, because they are random changes, so there is evolutionary pressure to minimise the number of changes.

If the mutation is of biological origin, it is NOT random. High energy cosmic particle, yes; biological, no. If you\'re not one of those weird nematodes, you don\'t need to worry about transposons.

They may not be perfectly random looked at in terms of the atom rearrangements, but in term of the effect on the next generation the consequences are close enough to random for all practical purposes

If we ever get to the point of being able to do intelligent design - which presumably includes setting up a biological equivalent of LTSpice - we could probably junk the random mutation feature, or at least monitor embryo\'s early for dangerous mutations and abort before care started getting expensive.

The system is focused on self-preservation. Ideally ANYTHING out of the ordinary is destroyed. Talking about mutations, one form of immune response to pathogen infection is to mutate the pathogen RNA/ DNA in a way to make it less pathogenic, by way of mutagenic enzyme secretion.

And this is recorded in the peer-reviewed literature?

> It\'s a two way street there. SARS-CoV-2 was mutated to become far less pathogenic and in a way to exponentially out-replicate the original strain, causing it to die out.

In which fantasy universe is this happening?

> The price for this was higher viral loads and therefore increased infectivity, but the infection was comparatively far less severe, almost innocuous..

It\'s still killing people in Australia

https://www.health.gov.au/health-alerts/covid-19/weekly-reporting#covid19-associated-deaths

Most of the population has been vaccinated - inner-city people like me have done better than the country as a whole

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_vaccination_in_Australia

so a loss of virulence isn\'t a plausible explanation for the reduced, but still significant death rate.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Martin Brown]

On 03/07/2023 17:07, Anthony William Sloman wrote:

On Tuesday, July 4, 2023 at 1:39:57 AM UTC+10, Fred Bloggs wrote:

It\'s a two way street there. SARS-CoV-2 was mutated to become far
less pathogenic and in a way to exponentially out-replicate the
original strain, causing it to die out.

In which fantasy universe is this happening?

It isn\'t so far off true.

The newer strains are much more infectious that the original wild form
and by comparison with delta which was twice as deadly as the initial
wild form the newer ones are comparatively mild (especially into a now
mostly vaccinated population).

The evolution of the strains with time is a matter of public record. The
original wild form is essentially toast now although one of its
descendents from a year ago still seems to be going.

Successful strains so far have lasted around 12 months or less as top
dog. The pattern this year is that cases are falling in UK summer.
(that didn\'t happen last year at all - it stayed pretty high then)

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1152143/variant-technical-briefing-52-21-april-2023.pdf

Figure 4 p13

Shows the prevalence of strains from April 22. BA.1 is now toast as are
all the strains that preceded it. XBB and XBB.1.5 are in the ascendant.

The price for this was higher viral loads and therefore increased
infectivity, but the infection was comparatively far less severe,
almost innocuous.

It\'s still killing people in Australia

And so is influenza and at about the same rate in all probability.
It is much less of a threat to healthy individuals than it once was.

https://www.health.gov.au/health-alerts/covid-19/weekly-reporting#covid19-associated-deaths

Most of the population has been vaccinated - inner-city people like
me have done better than the country as a whole

Vaccination has put it in about the same ballpark as flu. Yes it will
kill people (especially those who are not vaccinated or have immune
defficiency or other comorbidities) but it is no longer a major threat.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_vaccination_in_Australia

so a loss of virulence isn\'t a plausible explanation for the reduced,
but still significant death rate.

The current circulating strains are less virulent than the early forms.
Also the medics are a lot better at treating it.

--
Martin Brown

 

[Fred Bloggs]

On Monday, July 3, 2023 at 12:07:31 PM UTC-4, Anthony William Sloman wrote:

On Tuesday, July 4, 2023 at 1:39:57 AM UTC+10, Fred Bloggs wrote:
On Monday, July 3, 2023 at 1:42:25 AM UTC-4, Anthony William Sloman wrote:
On Monday, July 3, 2023 at 12:41:40 AM UTC+10, John Larkin wrote:
On Sun, 2 Jul 2023 06:06:41 -0700 (PDT), Fred Bloggs
bloggs.fred...@gmail.com> wrote:
On Sunday, July 2, 2023 at 1:42:30?AM UTC-4, Jan Panteltje wrote:
Horizontal Gene Transfer HGT
Virus-like transposons wage war on the species barrier
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/06/230629193248.htm

Wow!

So do a lot of other processes. Transposons have been in serious study for decades and even used in genetic engineering. But there are barriers:

\" On the other hand, host organisms have developed different mechanisms of defense against high rates of transposon activity, including DNA-methylation to reduce TE expression [30-33], several RNA interference mediated mechanisms [34] mainly in the germ line [35, 36], or through the inactivation of transposon activity by the action of specific proteins [37-39].\"

And transposons can cause deletions in the DNA as easily as insertions.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2874221/

Like mutation, gene swapping is useful, even necessary, but in moderation.

Evolution does depend on heritable changes appearing between generations, and to that extent mutations and gene swapping are necessary. Almost every change is for the worst, because they are random changes, so there is evolutionary pressure to minimise the number of changes.

If the mutation is of biological origin, it is NOT random. High energy cosmic particle, yes; biological, no. If you\'re not one of those weird nematodes, you don\'t need to worry about transposons.
They may not be perfectly random looked at in terms of the atom rearrangements, but in term of the effect on the next generation the consequences are close enough to random for all practical purposes
If we ever get to the point of being able to do intelligent design - which presumably includes setting up a biological equivalent of LTSpice - we could probably junk the random mutation feature, or at least monitor embryo\'s early for dangerous mutations and abort before care started getting expensive.

The system is focused on self-preservation. Ideally ANYTHING out of the ordinary is destroyed. Talking about mutations, one form of immune response to pathogen infection is to mutate the pathogen RNA/ DNA in a way to make it less pathogenic, by way of mutagenic enzyme secretion.
And this is recorded in the peer-reviewed literature?

Everybody knows about it except you apparently. It\'s the APOBEC enzyme defense. There are others.

Here\'s some really good news for you:

Enzyme that protects against viruses could fuel cancer evolution

https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2023/01/enzyme-protects-against-viruses-could-fuel-cancer-evolution

This is how viruses either cause cancer or stimulate latent cancer- one way they do it.

It\'s a two way street there. SARS-CoV-2 was mutated to become far less pathogenic and in a way to exponentially out-replicate the original strain, causing it to die out.
In which fantasy universe is this happening?

It happened right before your eyes in the pandemic. You missed it with your perpetual microscopic fixation on the macro-statistics.

The price for this was higher viral loads and therefore increased infectivity, but the infection was comparatively far less severe, almost innocuous.
It\'s still killing people in Australia

https://www.health.gov.au/health-alerts/covid-19/weekly-reporting#covid19-associated-deaths

By \"associated\" deaths they mean \"Factors such as other disease or chronic conditions may also have contributed to or caused deaths associated with COVID-19.\"- your same health.gov.au. Most of those people were in very ill-/-fragile health to begin with. Sedentary, overweight alcoholics are goners. The mortality is an extreme of statistical distribution.

Most of the population has been vaccinated - inner-city people like me have done better than the country as a whole

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_vaccination_in_Australia

so a loss of virulence isn\'t a plausible explanation for the reduced, but still significant death rate.

The Wu-Hu-1 or original virus was striking people down in the prime of life.. This XBB or whatever isn\'t doing that, and all the vaccinations are relatively dated as regards protection against the newer strains..

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Martin Brown]

On 02/07/2023 15:36, John Larkin wrote:

On Sun, 02 Jul 2023 11:56:07 GMT, Jan Panteltje <alien@comet.invalid
wrote:

On a sunny day (Sun, 02 Jul 2023 04:07:04 -0700) it happened John Larkin
jlarkin@highlandSNIPMEtechnology.com> wrote in
lgm2ai5c4eqqnjk69bm1m9vr7b48kjeva9@4ax.com>:

On Sun, 02 Jul 2023 05:42:22 GMT, Jan Panteltje <alien@comet.invalid
wrote:

Horizontal Gene Transfer HGT
Virus-like transposons wage war on the species barrier
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/06/230629193248.htm

Wow!

Sure, why reinvent a complex mechanism when you can steal the design?

What he article says in my understanding is that viruses can spread DNA sequences among their hosts
so you can get capabilities from a totally different species.

Exactly. That\'s why so many species share useful features. Some
critter pays a lot to evolve something that gives it an advantage, and
all its neighbors, including its predators and competitors, swipe it.

That isn\'t how it works though or plants would not have such interesting
chemistry to prevent predation by sap sucking insects and herbivores.

Nicotine, caffeine, tannins, cocaine and the like are all potent
insecticides. Some of them taste interesting and have effects on humans
that are less than lethal but sometimes highly addictive.

Which suggests a species will tend to evolve features that are hard to
steal. Trade secrets. Even poison pills, trans-species genetic
warfare.

There are a fair number of plants that are extremely toxic and/or very
spiny - mostly the ones that live in very harsh environments where water
is scarce and hard to come by so everything wants to eat them.

Only a handful of plant species on the entire planet have mastered
organofluorine chemistry and I don\'t think there are any mammals able to
tolerate it at all. Some amphibians and insects apparently can.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/pharmacology-toxicology-and-pharmaceutical-science/gastrolobium

The same \"design\" has evolved independently in different plant families
in the New World with cacti and in the Old world with the succulent
euphorbias. Plant bodies that are almost identical in shape having
solved the same problem of environmental constraints with intermittent
water, the need to store it without bursting and a lot of heat.

http://www.llifle.com/Encyclopedia/CACTI/Family/Cactaceae/25918/Gymnocalycium_pseudoragonesei

http://www.llifle.com/Encyclopedia/SUCCULENTS/Family/Euphorbiaceae/14187/Euphorbia_gymnocalycioides

The flowers are completely different and obviously the cacti have spines
(modified leaves) whereas the euphobias just have sharp pointy tubercles
and chemical weapons. Their latex sap is really very nasty.

A good survival rule of thumb in a jungle is clear sap is more often
drinkable, latex sap invariably isn\'t. Obvious counter example is
lettuce (although arguably that stuff is only fit for rabbit food).

--
Martin Brown

 

[Fred Bloggs]

On Tuesday, July 4, 2023 at 3:04:38 AM UTC-4, Anthony William Sloman wrote:

Interestingly:

Caco-2 [Caco2] are epithelial cells isolated from colon tissue derived from a 72-year-old, White, male with colorectal adenocarcinoma. This cell line is a suitable transfection host and has applications in cancer and toxicology research.


> Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Anthony William Sloman]

On Friday, July 7, 2023 at 7:13:13 AM UTC+10, Fred Bloggs wrote:

On Wednesday, July 5, 2023 at 12:32:07 AM UTC-4, Anthony William Sloman wrote:
On Wednesday, July 5, 2023 at 1:44:22 AM UTC+10, Fred Bloggs wrote:
On Tuesday, July 4, 2023 at 3:04:38 AM UTC-4, Anthony William Sloman wrote:
On Tuesday, July 4, 2023 at 4:07:49 AM UTC+10, Fred Bloggs wrote:
On Monday, July 3, 2023 at 12:07:31 PM UTC-4, Anthony William Sloman wrote:
On Tuesday, July 4, 2023 at 1:39:57 AM UTC+10, Fred Bloggs wrote:
On Monday, July 3, 2023 at 1:42:25 AM UTC-4, Anthony William Sloman wrote:
On Monday, July 3, 2023 at 12:41:40 AM UTC+10, John Larkin wrote:
On Sun, 2 Jul 2023 06:06:41 -0700 (PDT), Fred Bloggs <bloggs.fred...@gmail.com> wrote:
On Sunday, July 2, 2023 at 1:42:30?AM UTC-4, Jan Panteltje wrote:

<snip>

Instead, expression of wild-type APOBEC3 greatly promotes viral replication/propagation, suggesting that SARS-CoV-2 utilizes the APOBEC-mediated mutations for fitness and evolution.
Of course it does. Any living thing that mutates exploits the occasional favourable mutation.
That result only applies to in vitro observation of the Caco-2 cells. It was not a general finding. The general finding was mostly derived from archived virus samples from infected people.
Unlike the random mutations, this study suggests the predictability of all possible viral genome mutations by these APOBECs based on the UC/AC motifs and the viral genomic RNA structure.

So what. They are still random in their effect on the viral fitness.

Not going to debate dumb semantics.

Of course you aren\'t. You\'d lose.

The virus did not evolve into a harmless nothing of an infection by some dumb idea about random mutations. Things are random only to people who don\'t know what\'s happening.

The virus doesn\'t seem to be becoming any less virulent. It\'s certainly becoming moire infectious, because that\'s what selection does, but there\'s no selective pressure for it to become more or less lethal. You are confusing the falling death rate - caused by wide-spread vaccination - with a decline in the virulence of the virus.

You\'re detached from reality. Greatly reduced severity of disease was the very first well-publicized observation of the omicron and its descendants. You must have been asleep at the time.

It coincided with most of the infected being vaccinated. The people who died were mostly unvaccinated, even when large chunks of the population had been vaccinated.

snip- make one dumb leading statement and anything else you say is null and void

So everything you post is null and void? Not entirely true, but close enough for government work.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Fred Bloggs]

On Friday, July 7, 2023 at 2:46:15 AM UTC-4, Anthony William Sloman wrote:

On Friday, July 7, 2023 at 7:13:13 AM UTC+10, Fred Bloggs wrote:
On Wednesday, July 5, 2023 at 12:32:07 AM UTC-4, Anthony William Sloman wrote:
On Wednesday, July 5, 2023 at 1:44:22 AM UTC+10, Fred Bloggs wrote:
On Tuesday, July 4, 2023 at 3:04:38 AM UTC-4, Anthony William Sloman wrote:
On Tuesday, July 4, 2023 at 4:07:49 AM UTC+10, Fred Bloggs wrote:
On Monday, July 3, 2023 at 12:07:31 PM UTC-4, Anthony William Sloman wrote:
On Tuesday, July 4, 2023 at 1:39:57 AM UTC+10, Fred Bloggs wrote:
On Monday, July 3, 2023 at 1:42:25 AM UTC-4, Anthony William Sloman wrote:
On Monday, July 3, 2023 at 12:41:40 AM UTC+10, John Larkin wrote:
On Sun, 2 Jul 2023 06:06:41 -0700 (PDT), Fred Bloggs <bloggs.fred...@gmail.com> wrote:
On Sunday, July 2, 2023 at 1:42:30?AM UTC-4, Jan Panteltje wrote:

snip
Instead, expression of wild-type APOBEC3 greatly promotes viral replication/propagation, suggesting that SARS-CoV-2 utilizes the APOBEC-mediated mutations for fitness and evolution.
Of course it does. Any living thing that mutates exploits the occasional favourable mutation.
That result only applies to in vitro observation of the Caco-2 cells. It was not a general finding. The general finding was mostly derived from archived virus samples from infected people.
Unlike the random mutations, this study suggests the predictability of all possible viral genome mutations by these APOBECs based on the UC/AC motifs and the viral genomic RNA structure.

So what. They are still random in their effect on the viral fitness.

Not going to debate dumb semantics.
Of course you aren\'t. You\'d lose.

Lose by wasting time on nothing...

The virus did not evolve into a harmless nothing of an infection by some dumb idea about random mutations. Things are random only to people who don\'t know what\'s happening.

The virus doesn\'t seem to be becoming any less virulent. It\'s certainly becoming moire infectious, because that\'s what selection does, but there\'s no selective pressure for it to become more or less lethal. You are confusing the falling death rate - caused by wide-spread vaccination - with a decline in the virulence of the virus.

You\'re detached from reality. Greatly reduced severity of disease was the very first well-publicized observation of the omicron and its descendants. You must have been asleep at the time.
It coincided with most of the infected being vaccinated. The people who died were mostly unvaccinated, even when large chunks of the population had been vaccinated.

The variant appeared too early in the pandemic to even begin to make that claim. There may possibly be some merit to it when statistics are restricted to the very vulnerable people in less than perfect health.

snip- make one dumb leading statement and anything else you say is null and void

So everything you post is null and void? Not entirely true, but close enough for government work.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Anthony William Sloman]

On Friday, July 7, 2023 at 11:24:27 PM UTC+10, Fred Bloggs wrote:

On Friday, July 7, 2023 at 2:46:15 AM UTC-4, Anthony William Sloman wrote:
On Friday, July 7, 2023 at 7:13:13 AM UTC+10, Fred Bloggs wrote:
On Wednesday, July 5, 2023 at 12:32:07 AM UTC-4, Anthony William Sloman wrote:
On Wednesday, July 5, 2023 at 1:44:22 AM UTC+10, Fred Bloggs wrote:
On Tuesday, July 4, 2023 at 3:04:38 AM UTC-4, Anthony William Sloman wrote:
On Tuesday, July 4, 2023 at 4:07:49 AM UTC+10, Fred Bloggs wrote:
On Monday, July 3, 2023 at 12:07:31 PM UTC-4, Anthony William Sloman wrote:
On Tuesday, July 4, 2023 at 1:39:57 AM UTC+10, Fred Bloggs wrote:
On Monday, July 3, 2023 at 1:42:25 AM UTC-4, Anthony William Sloman wrote:
On Monday, July 3, 2023 at 12:41:40 AM UTC+10, John Larkin wrote:
On Sun, 2 Jul 2023 06:06:41 -0700 (PDT), Fred Bloggs <bloggs.fred...@gmail.com> wrote:
On Sunday, July 2, 2023 at 1:42:30?AM UTC-4, Jan Panteltje wrote:

<snip>

> > > You\'re detached from reality. Greatly reduced severity of disease was the very first well-publicized observation of the omicron and its descendants. You must have been asleep at the time.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8447366/

says nothing of the sort. If anything, there was a slight increase in virulence early on.

When the disease first appeared there were some suggestions that it killed up to 10% of the people that it infected, but as the diagnostic tools got reasonably effective the estimates got more realistic, though it was clearly more likely to killed you if you were older, and only the elderly ran that kind of risk.

It coincided with most of the infected being vaccinated. The people who died were mostly unvaccinated, even when large chunks of the population had been vaccinated.

The variant appeared too early in the pandemic to even begin to make that claim. There may possibly be some merit to it when statistics are restricted to the very vulnerable people in less than perfect health.

A bizarre statement unsupported by any evidence at all.

snip- make one dumb leading statement and anything else you say is null and void

So everything you post is null and void? Not entirely true, but close enough for government work.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Martin Brown]

On 07/07/2023 14:59, Anthony William Sloman wrote:

On Friday, July 7, 2023 at 11:24:27 PM UTC+10, Fred Bloggs wrote:
On Friday, July 7, 2023 at 2:46:15 AM UTC-4, Anthony William Sloman
wrote:
On Friday, July 7, 2023 at 7:13:13 AM UTC+10, Fred Bloggs wrote:
On Wednesday, July 5, 2023 at 12:32:07 AM UTC-4, Anthony
William Sloman wrote:
On Wednesday, July 5, 2023 at 1:44:22 AM UTC+10, Fred Bloggs
wrote:
On Tuesday, July 4, 2023 at 3:04:38 AM UTC-4, Anthony
William Sloman wrote:
On Tuesday, July 4, 2023 at 4:07:49 AM UTC+10, Fred
Bloggs wrote:
On Monday, July 3, 2023 at 12:07:31 PM UTC-4, Anthony
William Sloman wrote:
On Tuesday, July 4, 2023 at 1:39:57 AM UTC+10, Fred
Bloggs wrote:
On Monday, July 3, 2023 at 1:42:25 AM UTC-4,
Anthony William Sloman wrote:
On Monday, July 3, 2023 at 12:41:40 AM UTC+10,
John Larkin wrote:
On Sun, 2 Jul 2023 06:06:41 -0700 (PDT), Fred
Bloggs <bloggs.fred...@gmail.com> wrote:
On Sunday, July 2, 2023 at 1:42:30?AM UTC-4,
Jan Panteltje wrote:

snip

You\'re detached from reality. Greatly reduced severity of
disease was the very first well-publicized observation of the
omicron and its descendants. You must have been asleep at the
time.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8447366/

says nothing of the sort. If anything, there was a slight increase in
virulence early on.

When the disease first appeared there were some suggestions that it
killed up to 10% of the people that it infected, but as the

Only if they were 85+ and had three or more comorbidities in addition!

That is utter rubbish. Worst case estimate was 3% from China. Right from
the outset it looked like it hospitalised about 5% and killed 1% leaving
some of the more unlucky survivors permanently maimed by the experience.

This is a post I made based on the available data at the time for the
Oxford group run by Spiegelhalter:

https://groups.google.com/g/sci.electronics.design/c/_L_42-b1tB0/m/qB9awoSEAQAJ

One of my friends was on a ventilator for 9 days and their consultant
said it would take them 18 months to recover (I thought that unduly
pessimistic at the time - they were a keen active skier). They are still
unable to work or climb stairs even now. The consultant was optimistic.

The people who it damaged by deep lung infection are really badly harmed
and don\'t seem to recover. Annoyingly their afflictions only really show
up on the most exotic xenon contrast agent enhanced MRI scans. Their
lungs look normal on a standard scan but some parts just don\'t do gas
exchange any more due to scar tissue (which looks identical on MRI).

diagnostic tools got reasonably effective the estimates got more
realistic, though it was clearly more likely to killed you if you
were older, and only the elderly ran that kind of risk.

It was 1% for the entire population and risk doubled for every 8 years
older you get. I remember it well because my personal risk was about 1%.

It coincided with most of the infected being vaccinated. The
people who died were mostly unvaccinated, even when large chunks
of the population had been vaccinated.

Vaccination cut the risk of dying if infected by more than an order of
magnitude which is quite an impressive result. Fergusson was right (or
even a bit optimistic) - if the UK had continued on a business as usual
path we would have killed at least 600k as it was we have killed >200k.
(even with a very successful vaccination programme)

The UK Covid infection pattern has now reverted to the original dies
out in summer regime which characterised the first two years. It was a
serious issue in July 2021 when it became able to spread like wildfire
even in midsummer conditions and then oscillated for two years.

Only Covid admissions to healthcare are reliable in the UK now:

https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/healthcare?areaType=nation&areaName=England

The variant appeared too early in the pandemic to even begin to
make that claim. There may possibly be some merit to it when
statistics are restricted to the very vulnerable people in less
than perfect health.

A bizarre statement unsupported by any evidence at all.

There was a point in the pandemic vaccination programme when most of the
incredibly vulnerable and frail had been vaccinated and the rest of us
younger and more robust hadn\'t where the majority of deaths were in the
vaccinated cohort.

The disease remained invisible for a while early on when it was largely
circulating in the young fit ski set who frequented northern Italy. My
first probable exposure to Covid was in February when someone I knew
came back from their ski holiday with no sense of smell and a funny dry
cough. We got away with it but had no idea it was Covid at the time.

If they were very unlucky and belonged to the 10% that got complications
then things were different but the majority had either no symptoms, just
loss of smell/taste or something a bit like a common cold.

Regions not far from me were remarkably Covid hot because of the young
ski set but had comparatively few fatalities mostly of the elderly
grandparents of the people who brought it home with them.

--
Martin Brown