Urgent Petition To Keep RV Campgrounds Open

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Originally posted by Olddawgsrule

Taking Glue's warning and believing the article is way over my head, so I'll ask.
First I heard of mutations of the virus. Leads to many questions but I'll limit them:

Mutation happens by? My thought is it mutates as it succeeds through a person of maybe a better immune system? Or maybe a cultural thing? Differences in what we eat?

These mutations: This means if you had a strain, you can get another, correct? Eight defined by 29 individuals... Any reports out of NYC and what they are finding? Are we to expect 'several' more variations (as in dozens). Did H1N1 mutate like this?

Are any of these variations becoming air-borne?  

Mutations occur because of replication errors that aren't caught and corrected. You can kinda think of it like copying some data you get over the internet. For life forms other than viruses (viruses aren't really "alive") data is stored in DNA. When a cell divides the DNA splits in half and recreates two DNA strands, in theory identical. But errors do occur. In DNA replication there is error checking to be sure all the errors are corrected. Its like getting a packet of data over the internet along with a check sum which your computer can compare to one it creates itself to see if all the data came through correctly. If it didn't it tells the server which sent the data to try again. So in DNA based organisms the error rate is very low and mutations are few and far between.

Viruses are based on RNA rather than DNA. In RNA replication the error correction is much less if at all. So there are a lot more errors and mutations happen much faster. That many errors would kill a complex organism because there is so much data involved, but viruses are so simple that they mostly survive the errors and mutate very fast.  

The more infected ppl there are the more virus particles there are to mutate. Each strain can mutate again at any time, creating more strains. Some mutations are successful and some aren't.

Coronavirus has more data than most viruses, about 2x what flu has, so it does some error checking (its beyond my knowledge as to how), so it mutates relatively slowly for a virus. The rapid mutation of the flu  (like H1N1) is why flu vaccines can be pretty ineffective some years, the folks making the vaccines have to guess which varieties will be prevalent next winter and there are so many changing so fast that its hit or miss. 

As far as we know, all the Sars-CoV-2 strains are "airborne" in that they can remain active for some time in droplets sneezed, coughed, or just exhaled by infected ppl. In the literature there is a very specific definition of "airborne" which causes confusion. "Airborne" in the epidemiology definition means that the virus can survive in a dried up aerosol which used to be a droplet.  There isn't anything I've read that says that that happens with Sars-CoV-2.  

But it really doesn't matter to you if you get infected by a moist air puff from a sick person who is breathing heavily or get it from a dried up aerosol. So, the "new" recommendation to wear a mask will help stop the spread either way.