[conspire] When to get a covid test, brains, and a weird case, and a cardiology vs. immunology joke

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Ivan Sergio Borgonovo (mail at webthatworks.it):

> On 8/9/20 7:50 AM, Ruben Safir wrote:
> 
> >No I am not.  I am teaching.  Whether you listen or not is up to you.  I
> >don't give a fuck.
> 
> Then, please, explain how not limiting replication of a virus can
> decrease its mutations.

Ruben currently is not a subscriber, having (according to a notice I got
from Mailman) unsubscribed late yesterday.  However, I hope he returns,
and made sure he knows I have that view.

> And please if you're going to use "cross-species" transmission to
> justify the fact that limiting replication among humans is useless
> come up with some numbers and possibly more than one paper ;)

Ruben has a point that there are any number of ways for the infection to
return and resume growing among the (i.e., any) population, even after 
it's been believed to be locally eliminated.  This is a perfectly valid
point that I wouldn't dream of denying.

In the case of New Zealand, the national government is fully aware of
sundry ways that viral spread could return, which as I said is why they
are keeping up (maintaining) medical surveillance.  Specifically, what
the did in early June was return to what they call Alert Level 1
(https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/300029731/coronavirus-jacinda-ardern-announces-level-1-move):
  
  [Prime Minister] Ardern described level 1 as being "where life feels 
  as normal as it can in the time of a global pandemic".

  This will mean life returning to something approximating a
  pre-coronavirus normal. Social distancing measures and restrictions 
  on mass gatherings would disappear, although strict border controls 
  would still be in force, as would contact tracing.
  [...]

  Ardern said the Government had also been working with the events
  sector on a voluntary code that would help capture a record of
  people's details when they go to large events. Large events have in
  the past led to the formation of large Covid-19 clusters.

I've also heard some oral claims of other background
medical-surveillance measures they've been taking to notice as quickly
as possible if there ever is a new outbreak.  (I recently was volunteer
staff for the World Science Fiction Convention aka Worldcon, which if
this had been a normal year would have been held in Wellington, NZ, but
instead was held as the first-ever virtual Worldcon, and thus have been 
speaking more than usual with New Zealanders.)


> >He is wrong about that, flatly.  There is only one disease that has ever
> >been wiped out and that was smallpox, which has only human hosts, and it
> >too nearly a century.
> 
> SARS, MERS?

SARS-CoV-2 is known to be able to infect and in some cases kill
non-human animals, so there is significant chance of it ending up having
a reservoir presence in animals having repeated contact with humans -- 
starting of course with bats and perhaps pangolins.  The disease is
known to have infected and killed some big cats at the Bronx Zoo, for
example, and also to have infected a rather large number of commercial
mink farms in the Netherlands.  Morever, non-human animals at one or
both of those places (can't remember which) are known to have then
passed the infection back to humans.

So, Ruben's entirely correct that the threat exists of SARS-CoV-2
persisting in non-human animals that are exposed to humans, even if it
gets eliminated in various placse among humans.  This is true basically
of all zoonotic diseases.  As to his point about smallpox, I frequently
make the very same point, myself:  It is distinctive in that no
reservoir for the pathogen exists outside humans, hence once the last
smallpox case in humans gets cured and the frozen vials in a couple of
bio-weapons labs get destroyed, there would be literally no smallpox any
more at all.

If it were necessary to achieve the same total victory over zoonotic
diseases like COVID-19, we would be in deep trouble.  But that is not
the case.  It doesn't need to be 'wiped out like smallpox' to have 
achieve all the victory that's needed.  

That's the problem with Ruben saying I am 'wrong about that', because 
I never claimed that New Zealand or anywhere else had eliminated all
possible vectors of COVID-19 as if it were smallpox.  And if Ruben had 
bothered to read attentively what I actually said, he'd know that.

(By the way, the mere fact that several big cats at the Bronx Zoo
suffered infection with SARS-CoV-2 and at least one of them died, and 
that the Netherlands mass-killed a lot of minks, in no way makes it
inevitable that non-human pools of virus were permanently established.
For example, the Netherlands mink farms have repopulated themselves now, 
are back in business, and do _not_ any longer have SARS-CoV-2 there.)

BTW, it's rather likely that SARS and MERS are still around in animal
hosts (bats) in the wild, in parts of China.  We could see them hitting
the human population again, in theory.