A mutation?

Could this be due to a mutation? If it is then is it possible this new type could become dominant and sweep the world in a second phase. And if so, what will the young say and do then? My guess is they'll say "Mask up you oldies - see what you are doing to us!".

https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/1312434/young-adults-majority-of-new-virus-cases-in-canada

It is from the local press but the article has "Agence France-Presse" attached to it. I checked this and it is actually the world's oldest news agency.

Young adults majority of new virus cases in Canada
Agence France-Presse / 07:05 AM July 27, 2020

Some points:

“Recent national surveillance data show that young adults aged 20-39 years of age account for the highest incidence rates across all ages in Canada,” Canada’s chief public health officer Theresa Tam said in a statement.

For the week ending July 22, the incidence rate was highest among young men and women aged 20-29 (14.4 and 13.8 cases per 100,000 people respectively), followed by those aged 30-39.

“Younger Canadians are not invincible” to the disease, Tam warned, noting that it is not only the elderly who are at risk of serious health problems if infected.

She pointed out that, of the cases of COVID-19 reported to public health last week, 63 percent involved people under 39 years of age, of whom roughly one-third were hospitalized.

Public health guidelines are widely respected in Canada, but even so, several hundred people protested in Quebec City Sunday against the wearing of face masks, which are now compulsory in the French speaking province.

 

IMHO, this is not a big mutation, it is more likely that it is basically the same virus, maybe slightly changing, but is just spreading thru lazy young groups, congregating without being careful. But it is possible, the 1970's hiv virus caused far more cases of Karposi's than people infected in the 1980's.

I'm also hesitant to believe every "statistic," since "counting" is always subject to politics driven undercounting and overcounting, resource driven under and over. That makes every statistic suspect. Nowhere counted are the hundreds of thousands of people who die in their barrio because of poor or non-existent care or fear of authorities.

The ONLY statistic i think is even close is the AVERAGE deaths per month for a city state, or country, and the CURRENT deaths. If the US was averaging 7564 per day (2017) and now its 9164 per day, that might be close; 1600 "excess" x 90 days = 144000. Probably won't really know for months...

 

If I sound like a mad man it's possible I am. Hear me out.

There are thousands and thousands of viruses out in the world.
Only a few become deadly to humans.
We have covid-19, a deadly virus. If it mutates the new virus can be more deadly or it could be less deadly.
Since only a very few viruses are deadly it seems logical that the mutation will probably be less deadly.
I'm hoping for less deadly.

 

So in the Philippines "of the cases of COVID-19 reported to public health last week, 63 percent involved people under 39 years of age, of whom roughly one-third were hospitalized."?

 

Well! they say life begins at 40, Don't they

 

The deadly ones will tend to be the ones to fail as they kill off their hosts - but the world is full of examples where, for example, food sources have been destroyed and populations decimated (mostly due to man though - the species with the brains!).

But one way for a virus to spread is to seek new hosts OR a new subset of a host - the younger perhaps now being the new target. It does not need to be more deadly overall.

I am aware that many of the young have felt nothing to worry about and so behaved irresponsibly - but that is just what a virus would ask for if it could.

 

Those of us over 40 do!

 

Well, I don't think any of us have the knowledge to say how big a mutation is - that will be the geneticists looking at the nucleic acids will know that. Otherwise we are simply guessing between 1 and 2.

Being "basically the same virus" is, of course, probably correct as it seems to be showing the same symptoms. It is very unlikely to mutate into something very different in a relatively short time span.

But going from older to younger, although possibly described as a 'slight' change, could eventually lead to a new host group, a much larger infected population and all the things that having the young ill, hospitalised and dead will do to the world economy. The change might be 'slight' but perhaps the outcome will not be.

 

Don't want to hear those words again "I do"