236
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 07 Sep 2024
236 points (98.8% liked)
News
23388 readers
1631 users here now
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
Virulence is defined as causing damage to the host. If the virus kills everyone in that small proximity, the virus will no longer be able to reproduce or spread, plain and simple.
Viruses are super crafty in obtaining their limited number of proteins from the host. However, some viruses bring enzymes with them to get the job done without much help from the host. These are typically larger RNA viruses. Influenza is in this group, but it still steals the 5' cap from the host. This happens without miss as it's able to interact with the host RNA polymerase undetected and then this cap makes it so the influenza RNA appears to be host RNA.
The 1918 influenza was so deadly as it had just jumped to a new host, humans. The same exact influenza responsible for the 1918 pandemic has relatives still in circulation. It's not in circulation as the less virulent versions were more successful. This explicitly demonstrates the preference to be less virulent.
If a virus doesn't need many proteins from the host, it's able to reproduce much more quickly than one dependant on more host resources. The more resources it needs, the increased ability of the immune system to prevent it's reproduction. So in many situations, a lower requirement for host resources can make it more successful. Regardless, it can be very dependent on host resources, like many DNA viruses, and still not be very virulent. A great example of this is Hepatitis D. Virology is a fascinating field and it's highly intricate as a virus is more like it's host than any other viruses. There's not a lot of commonality between different viruses and their reproduction cycles. So viruses in the same family are compared, and the 1918 becoming less virulent shows there's a preference for becoming less virulent over time.