A single line often inverts meaning once you see what it
answers, so neighbouring messages are always shown.
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It is clearly fit in the populations it is spreading in.
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The convergence is possibly for cellular infectivity and immune evasion - all things that will be selected for in achronic infection without sterilising immunity. Strong competition between viruses for cells. However, my assumption has always been that this can only be likely to degrade transmissibility (given it was already transmissible at the beginning). But perhaps there is just a fortunate (for the virus) alignment of a within-host fitness peak and a between host one. And the latter involves too many intermediate steps with negative epistatic effects to reach in a stepwisefashion.
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Within host (and with the additional benefit of recombination) these combinations are readily obtainable.
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Given the low frequency of chronic infections compared to the huge number with 'normal' durations of infection, doesn't the fact that we are seeing the same sort of constellation of mutations evolve and spread 3 times independently suggest that they have a major advantage at the population level?
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2021-01-14 15:46
Andrew Rambaut
Yes - they do. But I think they can't get there by progressive steps in sequential infections - there are troughs (wesee all of these mutations appear individually many times).
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So the chronic infections offer an opportunity for these to arise in combination. Chronic infections are rare as aproportion of infections but there are shed loads of infections now.
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Indeed. Not saying the theory is wrong, just that there are some loose ends. I can only imagine how Alina and ganghave reacted to this: [shared file(s): s41591-020-01205-5.pdf]
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Nice piece. Angie is a true hero. I can't imagine what she must put up with (you probably can more than me, Eddie, but women get it so much worse).
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She's a 1000X times tougher than me. I find it very difficult and have to get off social media as much as I can. I also hate dealing with the mainstream media. She must get endless shit. No idea how she manages it.