Brad Klee <bradklee@gmail.com> wrote:
A truly frightening scenario is one with an extremely adaptive super-virus whose successful mutation time roughly matches time of human immunization response.
Let?s hope this possibility remains science _fiction_!
Isn't that exactly what HIV is? Fortunately, HIV is not as contagious as covid-19. I wonder if a virus as deadly as HIV or rabies, but as contagious as covid-19 or the common cold is possible. I hope not. Here's an easy (?) math problem to get our minds off viruses: What do 3076521984, 3718250496, and 6398410752, and no other numbers, have in common?
On 3/29/2020 8:58 AM, Keith F. Lynch wrote:
Brad Klee <bradklee@gmail.com> wrote:
A truly frightening scenario is one with an extremely adaptive super-virus whose successful mutation time roughly matches time of human immunization response. Let?s hope this possibility remains science _fiction_! Isn't that exactly what HIV is? Fortunately, HIV is not as contagious as covid-19. I wonder if a virus as deadly as HIV or rabies, but as contagious as covid-19 or the common cold is possible. I hope not.
One factor that mitigates against such a disease is that very deadly viral diseases make the victim so sick that he doesn't tend to spread it; both because he's bed ridden and because everyone can recognize he's sick and can avoid him. Smallpox is more deadly than covid19 (about 30% fatality) and is about as contagious, except a victim is noticeably sick. Brent
Here's an easy (?) math problem to get our minds off viruses:
What do 3076521984, 3718250496, and 6398410752, and no other numbers, have in common?
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KFL: "What do 3076521984, 3718250496, and 6398410752, and no other numbers, have in common?" They are obviously pandigital numbers and thus share the divisor 3^2. The GCD of the three numbers divided by 9 is a large power of 2. A quick check shows that no other pandigital has that large a power-of-two divisor (the next largest being for 9805234176).
participants (3)
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Brent Meeker -
Hans Havermann -
Keith F. Lynch