If Common Cold viruses like SARS-Cov-2 can mutate, why doesn't this happen in viruses that cause other disease?

[haidut]

More of a question for thought than anything else. I have long heard that the common cold is caused by "viruses," and that these viruses mutate every year or so. Hence, why many people can catch several colds a year, every year. Obviously, the same storyline is being rolled out with Covid. You don't just have to worry about SARS-Cov-2: Electric Boogaloo, but now the Delta Airlines variant, and the Lambada, Dance of Death variant, and whatever other nonsense they think of.

Putting aside the well documented problems with discovery, isolation, and detection for a moment.....

Why don't other types of viruses "mutate?" Why aren't we concerned with other forms?

Take Chickenpox. It's supposedly caused by the Varicella Zoster Virus. Chickenpox usually occurs once during childhood..... and that's it. If you do come down with a recurrence of the virus, it is usually several decades later, and takes on a slightly different form, of Shingles. So, the question....... how come there aren't several different forms of Chickenpox? How come we don't have Turkeypox, and Seagullpox, and Penguinpox, and Eaglepox, and Ostrichpox and so many other variations that we've run out of birds to name them after? Or do all these hundreds/thousands/millions exist, and they all basically present as the same disease, and once your body fought off one, it's pretty exceptional at fighting off them all?

You can apply this idea to measles, smallpox, HIV, or any other disease where a "virus" is the supposed source. In fact, the origins of vaccination came from the idea that an exposure to Cowpox was enough to give the body immunity from the more serious version of smallpox. It's pretty clear the talk of variants and "booster shots" runs counter to one of the initial postulates on vaccination. Although, they've broken many of their own rules during this pandemic narrative, so this in itself is nothing new.

But just something to ponder..... how come no one gets Eaglepox or Penguinpox, but we all just get Chickenpox?

My friend - since you are asking this question, you probably already suspect/know the answer
Namely, the only viruses that mutate fast enough to (conveniently) cause "pandemics" on a regular basis (at least annually) are the viruses...for which vaccines have been developed. The selective pressure on wild-type viruses without a vaccine is just too weak to cause rapid mutations. So many people to infect naturally, with such different immune systems, innate resistance, past infection history, etc. It takes years/decades to have a wild-type virus sweep through a large enough crowd to spur a mutation. So, by artificially accelerating a specific virus' evolution, a vaccine ensures BOTH a never-ending/repeated (and highly profitable) pandemic AND constantly increasing lethality of the virus (which does wonders to convince "skeptics" to get vaccinated, despite the vaccine being of no help). This is probably one reason flu deaths have been steadily climbing in most vaccinated countries and now we will probably see the same happen for SARS-CoV-2 and...it will be blamed on the unvaccinated (of course).

It's official: COVID-19 vaccination may be stemming evolution of “fitter” SARS-CoV-2 variants

Actual title of the press article. I won't comment much on this for obvious (read: censorship) reasons, but I will say this - Luc Montagnier was right (see first link below). @Drareg @Regina @boris @Giraffe @tankasnowgod https://greatgameindia.com/covid-19-vaccines-creating-variants/ COVID-19...

raypeatforum.com

Montagnier has been getting coverage saying exactly this about SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19 and the associated vaccines, but if you dig up his older interviews going back to 2009 you will see that he said the same thing about ALL viruses and vaccines (including HIV). Montagnier is the Godfather of anti-vaccination and for reasons that are arguably much more compelling than the side effects of vaccines (that people like Robert Kennedy talk about) such as neurological issues, cancer, etc. Namely, vaccines are mostly ineffective at providing population-wide protection while also ensuring the specific virus/viruses they target will be continuously mutating and killing more people than the preceding mutations. I think the only reason he is still alive is that he is a Nobel laureate. Considering his stance on HIV (which he actually discovered and studied more than anybody else on this planet), and viral treatments in general, if it was anybody less visible he would be long gone by now. Btw, he has been living in "exile" in countries he refuses to mention and when they asked him in an interview why all the secrecy, he answered "I want to live, you know". Peat has said the same thing in regards to vaccines recently, but in a much more subtle indirect way - i.e. basically saying that vaccinology is a pseudoscience that makes astrology look like astrophysics in comparison.

 

[DrJ]

So, back to the original question..... why don't we have hundreds or thousands of versions of chickenpox? Like, Eaglepox, Penguinpox, Ostrichpox, and such? Why aren't people coming down with different versions of this disease every year? Or a few times a year? And how could smallpox ever have been "eradicated?"

Basically, it's a one and done for about 50 years. Even if they do "mutate," we are just as successful at fighting off those mutations for decades. But many people catch 2-3 colds a year for decades on end. So, something doesn't add up in this explanation. If "mutation" can explain multiple colds, it should follow that other "viral diseases" would occur at more frequent intervals, too. But clearly, they don't.

Well it's not like we really know if we do or if we don't. It's not like there is some extremely precise test that sequences every virus down to the last amino and that we use such a thing on every test if such a thing existed. There has already been at least 100 catalogued variants of the thing called the covid 19 virus but they're only naming some of them.

Frankly, a lot of disease seems to have been resolved by good sanitation and hygiene practices. Pic related.

 

[BrianF]

Why would a rare case where a child contracts it twice be a sign of mutation? Couldn't that be a sign that the child's immune system malfunctioned, or isn't as robust as the general population? In fact, if the cases are rare, it would be more highly suggestive of this.

Its either one or the other.

I'm going with mutation.

 

[BrianF]

Vaccination against the 'childhood diseases) in the UK was rolled out in the 1960s. Its largely credited with the reduction in childhood deaths from measles, pox etc.

If you check the stats, the deaths had been dropping rapidly in the years before and were at practically zero by the time the vaccinations began.

There are three main factors in why this would be:

1) The National Health service was formed in 1948 and the two decades contributed to an overall improvement in health.

2) The Welfare State, the poorest were given money which helped alleviate the symptoms of poverty and improved diet for many.

3) The most important factor - all across the nation, post war Britain undertook massive slum clearances and huge new build housing programmes in every town and city across the country so millions of people had proper sanitation for the first time ever. The new builds were far from perfect and many have since been knocked down but as far as improving sanitation, they were very effective, indoor toilets, modern sewage systems.

The vaccines were a major waste of money.

 

[Makrosky]

Can't it be as simple as some virus families have the ability to mutate rapidly and others don't?

Just like some bacteria families have different traits than others.

 

[sweetpeat]

Can't it be as simple as some virus families have the ability to mutate rapidly and others don't?

Just like some bacteria families have different traits than others.

I think you're on to something:

Mechanisms of viral mutation

The remarkable capacity of some viruses to adapt to new hosts and environments is highly dependent on their ability to generate de novo diversity in a short period of time. Rates of spontaneous mutation vary amply among viruses. RNA viruses mutate faster ...

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

The remarkable capacity of some viruses to adapt to new hosts and environments is highly dependent on their ability to generate de novo diversity in a short period of time. Rates of spontaneous mutation vary amply among viruses. RNA viruses mutate faster than DNA viruses, single-stranded viruses mutate faster than double-strand virus, and genome size appears to correlate negatively with mutation rate.