30% of all ICUs in London hospitals are occupied by COVID-19 patients with complications. 90% of these are unvaccinated.
We might be witnessing an evolutionary-scale event right now: people who for some (hereditary?) reasons chose a strong belief and are unable to adjust it on arrival of new data seem to be right now removing themselves from the gene pool. 🤔
@kravietz most of them have had kids by this moment, though.
People often forget that natural selection works specifically by killing off failed mutants *before* they had a chance to procreate.
@isagalaev Death isn't necessary.
Removal from the reproductive pool or a markedly-lower probabalistic success in reproductive / survival are.
There was some research on higher incidence of impotence as result of COVID-19 complications.
I was also thinking about this older age mortality factor — I might be wrong but in humans the reproductive success seems to be multi-generational and associated with social status.
If your anti-vaxx parents die, you have lower chances of getting to prestigious university, get a well-paid job and generally lower influen on others.
@isagalaev @kravietz @dredmorbius how many other diseases with 99.5% survival rate have significantly affected human evolution?
@CensorshipBureau A disease with 0% mortality but effectively sterilising an individual (genital warts-based cervical cancer, several other VDs) would have that effect.
Diseases which don't impact the parent but induce severe birth defects or spontaneous abortion would be others. Scarlet fever (leaves fetus deaf and/or blind) a case in point.
The observed case fatality rate of COVID-19 remains about 1.6%, and is probably the best comparison with historical diseases, as here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_human_disease_case_fatality_rates
That's still relatively high, especially in modern times.
Note that infectious disease is not a static entity, that there is ongoing mutation (as with Delta and Lambda variants of SARS-COV-2), that characteristics can change, and that impacts other than death should be accounted for, including convalescence and recovery, long-term effects, overwhelming of health and support services, and economic impacts. (Covid's largest impacts remain secondary to the illness itself, through economic disruption even in the absence of specific government-mandated shutdowns. People don't like exposing themselves to serious or fatal illness, funny that.)
There's also the fact that the true death toll (and true case count) are far higher than official statistics. The Economist estimates 15.4m deaths to date (95% probability range: 9.5--18.5m), against 4.6 officially-reported deaths. That's 3.35 above the official statistics.
They also estimate total cases working backwards from deaths.
https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/coronavirus-excess-deaths-estimates
@dredmorbius @CensorshipBureau @isagalaev
> Scarlet fever
Also zika virus (microcephaly), toxoplasmosis (neurological problems)
