Coronavirus is weakening, could die out on its own without a vaccine and patients now survive infections that would have killed them at start of the pandemic

I suspect that what the good doctor is noticing is that all the very vulnerable to the virus are now dead.  So he is now seeing what is left, people who were less vulnerable to it in the first place

But it is certainly true that viruses evolve and it certainly true that a form of a virus that does not kill its host will itself survive better. So a non-lethal form could well become dominant

The coronavirus, once an 'aggressive tiger' of a disease, has weakened and become more like a wild cat, according to a top Italian doctor.

Professor Matteo Bassetti said he is convinced the virus is 'changing in severity' and patients are now surviving infections that would have killed them before.

And if the virus's weakening is true, Covid-19 could even disappear without a for a vaccine by becoming so weak it dies out on its own, he claimed.

He has said multiple times in recent months that patients with Covid-19 seem to be faring much better than they were at the start of the epidemic in Italy.

Professor Bassetti suggests this could be because of a genetic mutation in the virus making it less lethal, because of improved treatments, or because people are not getting infected with such large doses because of social distancing.

But other scientists have hit back at the claims in the past and said there is no scientific evidence that the virus has changed at all.

Professor Bassetti, the chief of infectious diseases at San Martino General Hospital in Genoa, Italy, told The Sunday Telegraph the virus could wither away on its own.

He said: 'It was like an aggressive tiger in March and April but now it's like a wild cat. Even elderly patients, aged 80 or 90, are now sitting up in bed and they are breathing without help. The same patients would have died in two or three days before.'

Italy was one of the worst hit countries in the world during the pandemic's early stages, and has now recorded more than 238,000 positive cases and 34,000 deaths.

Scientists have said the elderly population there, the virus spreading in rural areas and the suddenness of the outbreak contributed to the country's high death toll.

Professor Bassetti suggests that one of the reasons the virus might be causing less serious illness is a genetic mutation which has made it less damaging to people's lungs.

Or, he said, people may simply be receiving smaller amounts when they get infected, because of social distancing and lockdown rules, making them less sick.

This theory depends on the severity of someone's illness being affected by their 'viral load' - the amount of virus that gets into someone's body when they're first struck by it.

Professor Bassetti said: 'The clinical impression I have is that the virus is changing in severity.

Viruses are known to change over time because they are subject to random genetic mutations in the same way that all living things are.

These mutations can have various effects and many will only happen briefly and not become a permanent change as newer generations of viruses replace the mutated ones.

However, some of the mutations might turn out to be advantageous to the virus, and get carried forward into future generations.

For example, if a virus becomes less dangerous to its host - that is, it causes fewer symptoms or less death - it may find that it is able to live longer and reproduce more.

As a result, more of these less dangerous viruses are produced and they may go on to spread more effectively than the more dangerous versions, which could be stamped out by medication because more people realise they are ill, for example.

The mutation may then be taken forward in the stronger generations and become the dominant version of the virus.

In an explanation of an scientific study about HIV, the NHS said in 2014: 'The optimal evolutionary strategy for a virus is to be infectious (so it creates more copies of itself) but non-lethal (so its host population doesn’t die out).

'The "poster boy" for successful long-living viruses is, arguably, the family of viruses that cause the common cold, which has existed for thousands of years.' 

'In March and early April the patterns were completely different. People were coming to the emergency department with a very difficult to manage illness and they needed oxygen and ventilation, some developed pneumonia.

'Now, in the past four weeks, the picture has completely changed in terms of of patterns.

'There could be a lower viral load in the respiratory tract, probably due to a genetic mutation in the virus which has not yet been demonstrated scientifically.'

But other scientists did not welcome the idea and said there was no evidence to back up Professor Bassetti's claims.

Dr Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz, from the University of Wollongong in Australia, told MailOnline that the idea the virus has disappeared 'seems dubious'.

The epidemiologist warned Italy - which was the centre of Europe's coronavirus crisis in March - was still recording new Covid-19 cases and deaths, showing the virus was still a danger.

At the start of June, in response to Professor Bassetti's claim, Dr Angela Rasmussen, from Columbia University, tweeted: 'There is no evidence that the virus is losing potency anywhere.'

She added less transmission means fewer hospitalisations and deaths - but warned: 'That doesn't mean less virulence.'

The virulence of a virus is how dangerous the illness is but may not directly relate to how contagious it is.

Dr Oscar MacLean, of the University of Glasgow, added: 'These claims are not supported by anything in the scientific literature, and also seem fairly implausible on genetic grounds.

SOURCE

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It’s been more than three weeks since mass protests started in the US, sparking fears of a surge in infections. The data so far is surprising

No surprise.  The rioters were mostly young.  The coronavirus is almost always a disease of the elderly

On May 26, the day after George Floyd’s death, people started to stream onto America’s streets to protest against police brutality and racial discrimination.

Before long those streets were brimming with protesters. Day after day, tens of thousands of people were marching together in more than 100 cities across the country.

They were also jammed together like proverbial sardines – well inside the 1.8-metre distance dictated by their government’s coronavirus guidelines.

That created an obvious fear – that the protests would cause a huge surge in infections, just as the United States was trying to open up again.

Government officials allowed the demonstrations to continue; they were too big to shut down anyway. But several did express deep concerns.

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti warned the protests could become “super spreader events”. Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms told protesters they should all get themselves tested for the virus. Washington D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser said she worried the mass gatherings could cause “spikes in coronavirus cases” later.

“Two weeks from now, across America, we’re going to find out whether this gives us a spike and drives the numbers back up,” Maryland Governor Larry Hogan said at the end of May.

Well, here we are, almost three weeks later. The US currently has 2.2 million confirmed cases of the virus, and its death toll stands at more than 120,000.

And yet, in news as welcome as it is baffling, so far there is little sign of the protests having the effect health experts feared.

According to America’s Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, someone can carry the virus without symptoms appearing for as long as a fortnight.

So, let’s take the example of Minneapolis, which was the site of Mr Floyd’s death and the initial epicentre of the protests. It has been 26 days since the demonstrations started there.

So far more than 10,000 Minneapolis protesters have been tested for the virus, and fewer than 2 per cent of those people were infected.

“We’re delighted that we are not seeing a huge increase in cases,” Kris Ehresmann, director of the Minnesota Department of Health’s infectious disease division, told reporters at a briefing on Wednesday, though she did say officials wanted to be “cautious” about drawing conclusions.

The statistics are similar in Philadelphia, Seattle and even New York.

Al Jazeera recently looked at a selection of cities where major protests took place. Its analysis is about a week old now, but still accounts for the virus’s expected incubation period. Again, there was little evidence of a protest-related spike.

SOURCE

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Most Americans do not want to “defund” the police

But they support other reforms

“DEFUND THE POLICE”, a slogan that might once have appealed only to America’s left, has gone mainstream. Since George Floyd’s death on May 25th, protesters across the country have called for police departments to be “defunded”, or for a portion of funds to be diverted to social programmes. Others want departments abolished altogether. Some lawmakers appear to have listened. On June 7th Bill de Blasio, New York City's mayor, pledged to redirect some of the city’s $6bn police budget to youth and social services. The same day members of the city council in Minneapolis, where Mr Floyd was killed, vowed to dismantle the city’s police department entirely. The Los Angeles City Council is also researching how to cut its police department’s budget by $100m-150m.

But the proposal has yet to win over a majority of voters. A recent survey by YouGov, a pollster, found that only a quarter of American adults are in favour of cutting funding for police departments outright. (When respondents are alerted to arguments from opponents of defunding that it might lead to a rise in crime, the proportion drops even lower.) A larger share favour redirecting funds from police to alternative first responders, such as social workers, drug counsellors and mental-health experts. Nearly half of Americans approve of this approach, though support is split along party lines with 68% of Democrats in favour, and 55% of Republicans opposed.

Other police reforms enjoy broader support. Another survey, also by YouGov, found that large majorities of Americans favour training police officers to de-escalate conflicts (88%), equipping them with body cameras (87%), identifying troublesome officers sooner (80%) and banning restraint of suspects’ necks (67%; Mr Floyd was choked by an officer’s knee). Two bills introduced by the House and Senate, on June 8th and June 17th, respectively, include all of these ideas in one form or another. The Senate bill encourages de-escalation training; the House bill boosts funding for investigations of police misconduct; both encourage the use of body cameras. The House bill bans chokeholds and neck restraints outright, whereas the Senate one discourages chokeholds by blocking federal grants if used.

Yet when it comes to reforming the police, congressional powers are limited. Most of America’s 18,000 law-enforcement agencies are governed locally, so lawmakers in Washington can only regulate them in roundabout ways—for example by collecting data, prosecuting abuses of power or restricting access to federal grants. Some reforms passed in Congress could be ignored.

Things may not get that far. Democrats and Republicans in Congress struggle to pass controversial legislation even in amicable times, let alone during an election year. President Donald Trump, who recently signed an executive order creating a national database to track misbehaving police officers, could veto whatever legislators come up with. On the day the Democratic-led House unveiled its bill, Mr Trump tweeted his disapproval: “the Radical Left Democrats want to Defund and Abandon our Police. Sorry, I want LAW & ORDER!”

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IN BRIEF

Nancy Pelosi orders removal of four portraits of Confederate House speakers — Democrats Robert Hunter, Howell Cobbs, James Orr, and Charles Crisp — from the Capitol (NBC News)

Only the beginning: Senate Democrats move to gut the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (National Review)

Europeans are working with the U.S. to restructure the World Health Organization (Reuters)

Fifty-five percent believe that Biden potentially has early stages of dementia (The Daily Wire)

Politico agrees that polls are underestimating Trump just like in 2016 (The Daily Wire)

Senator Marco Rubio introduces the Fairness in Collegiate Athletics Act to address name, image, and likeness in college sports (Rubio.senate.gov)

Olympia, Washington, Mayor Cheryl Selby, who supported Black Lives Matter, gets home vandalized during riots, calls it "domestic terrorism" (The Daily Wire)

Major fumble: Oklahoma State coach Mike Gundy foolishly apologizes for "pain, discomfort" caused by sporting a T-shirt emblazoned with One America News (ESPN)

Gov. Kim Reynolds, a Republican, said she would issue an executive order that would take effect before the November election, ending Iowa's distinction as the last state to deprive all former felons of voting rights for life (The New York Times)

Notre Dame Law School establishes Religious Liberty Clinic (Notre Dame News)

Massive spying on users of Google's Chrome shows new security weakness (Reuters)

Border violence could spur India to help U.S. counter China (Washington Examiner)

Policy: Reform our cities, not just the police (National Review)

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