Wait, what? Even if this imaginary possibility were a reality, it would be a motivation in favor of vaccination, since vaccination with an RNA vaccine generates a modest amount of mRNA for one viral protein, while infection with the virus itself – which is the only realistic alternative at this point – generates a great deal of mRNA for the entire virus. That’s not even considering the thousands of people the virus is killing every day.
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Right, but that makes it considerably more difficult to see how they get back out again after long periods of that kind of dormancy. One thing is to get an RNA virus that does not normally rely on reverse transcription and integration in it’s life-cycle, to still end up inadvertently reverse transcribing and integrating into a host cell’s DNA, but then this needs to happen in a germline cell not just a somatic one (so it can be passed on to subsequent generations). Then this now integrated viral genome needs to remain viable over hundreds, or thousands of host generations, get transcribed back into RNA, and then packaged into a viable viral particle (meaning the viral genome needs to become correctly expressed again suddenly so you get functional capsid, envelope, and receptor proteins und so weiter).
For an RNA virus that is not a retrovirus(viruses that rely on reverse transcription into DNA as part of it’s normal lifecycle), this is quite a stretch. I wouldn’t claim this could never happen, or hasn’t ever happened to any RNA virus, but that scenario definitely can’t be relied upon as a likely or typical occurrence for RNA virus reservoirs. And Ebola is not a retrovirus.
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I agree and would add that an mRNA vaccine does not contain any mRNA encoding the viral replicase.
@Giltil, the fact that you suggested this indicates that you lack the most basic understanding of viral replication, an understanding that would seem to be necessary to have any informed opinion on viral evolution.
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I agree with @Michael_Okoko that your interpretation is unwarranted.
Why did you post it, then? I wouldn’t say that you posted it as a defense of GE, it appears more likely that you misinterpreted it to defend GE. Do you realize that reviews are not where one finds the evidence? We call them secondary literature for a reason.
How did you get and read the full review? I would hope that you would not post a mere abstract of a review that you hadn’t bothered to read.
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All this is a matter of benefit/risk analysis. For old people or people with comorbitities, it probably makes sense to vaccine them. But for young healthy people, for whom the risk to being killed by the virus is extremely low, it is a different story.
Not really. Were the possibility of insertion and re-emergence to be entertained, inserted viral DNA sequences would accumulate mutations much less rapidly than their RNA counterparts. Granted, it would not be a safe harbor for millions and millions of years, but it probably could be for thousands and thousands of years.
I invite you to have a look at the paper I referred to for you would see that the genome of an RNA virus can insert into the host genome even if said virus doesn’t code for a reverse transcriptase. Or you could have a look to this one also:
Sorry, but that still makes zero sense. In the scenario you’ve proposed, the risk of vaccination is always lower than the risk from the virus, since there is always more mRNA present from the virus than from the vaccination.
I invite you to read the comments on the latter preprint.
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You realise that replicase and reverse transcriptase are different things, right?
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What is your point?
DNA is less susceptible to mutation than RNA, but there is no selective conservation which would protect such insertions. Mutations which would be lethal to independent virions are passed on, so it is not just accumulation of nearly neutral mutations, but any degree of deleterious. Not to mention that there is zero actual evidence of such epidemic re-emergence.
Most ERV sequences have acquired numerous mutations over time and therefore do not have protein-coding potential or the potential to generate infectious viral particles.
ERVmap analysis reveals genome-wide transcription of human endogenous retroviruses
The evolutionary arms race matches well with expectations and observations of epidemics past and present, and provides a satisfactory explanation of attenuation. There are several lines of evidence.
Animal production is a huge industry and epidemics in this sector can cost billions, so a great deal of study has been committed, and what we see are typical phylogenies traceable to wild serum isolates. Stasis does not fit with observed selective pressure on host population cellular receptors. I have no idea how Sanford would concoct an exemption for RNA viruses infecting short lived bacteria, plankton, and algae; those may be out of sight out of mind in terms of popular awareness, but they are there, immensely plentiful and diverse.
The GE model is characterized by fetched attempts to lead the witness rather than follow the evidence to where it leads. So to answer the question, “if genetic entropy is true, why have not all RNA viruses gone extinct?”, the inescapable conclusion is that Genetic Entropy is simply not true for viruses, which is not surprising given that it poses a problem, epidemic attenuation, which poses no difficulty to begin with. By contrast, the evolutionary arms race model of infectious agents works fine, so there is no outstanding fundamental quandary requiring solution.
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@Mercer pointed out that the mRNA vaccine doesn’t encode the viral replicase, and your response was basically “even without a reverse transcriptase, this paper says they can get inserted into the host genome”.
That suggests to me either you’re confusing replicase and reverse transcriptase, or you’re just making a disconnected comment rather than a response to the words you quoted.
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I’d love to see the probability worked out mathematically in support of this conjecture, Gilbert. Can you show us your math?
Thanks,
Chris
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Were we able to ride flying pigs, municipal gridlock would be solved.
Best,
Chris
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@swamidass, just curious: is there anything in the site rules about spreading dangerous misinformation?
Please message moderators privately about anything that is legitimately dangerous, and we will make a decision what to do. Please be specific, with links to the posts in question.
Would anti-vaxxer sentiments qualify? I see no reason to make this private. @Giltil has repeatedly suggested both the dangers of and the lack of need for covid vaccines.
We will move it to this private section of the forum in a moment…except I don’t see where that is. Please follow the directions @John_Harshman:
I believe that his point, like mine, is that you lack the most basic understanding of viral replication.
You are promoting dangerous misinformation, Gil. You have a moral responsibility to acquire some understanding of the subjects on which you express strong opinions.
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Here:
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