Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Science/2020 June 1

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June 1

Is there a legal/fiscal/cultural reason why fields in Estonia might generally have a grove or orchard in them

(as per [in Estonia#Orchards]) I was wondering why there was a preponderance of trees within (as opposed to on the periphery of) fields in Estonia. I noticed this as I was flying into Talinn. Is this the result of legislation, or culture. Or have I imagined it? Bogger (talk) 17:29, 1 June 2020 (UTC)

I think you are referring to wooded meadows. Our article is a bit thin, though if you google "wooded meadows Estonia", results such as this and this crop up, which give quite a bit of background general info. PaleCloudedWhite (talk) 06:33, 2 June 2020 (UTC)

Benevolent virus mutation

I've heard that as epidemics spread viruses often mutate to a less deadly form. I've heard this as an explanation why the death rate in Bergamo was so high (0.57% of everyone) but farther from Italy death rates were lower even when selecting for people with antibodies (0.37% in Heinsberg).

I can understand how this works for highly deadly viruses like ebola, but is this effect really at play for such low mortality viruses as corona? 95.168.122.249 (talk) 17:38, 1 June 2020 (UTC)

I am pretty sure it applies to all infectious disease, but I am having a hard time believing that we can see the effect over such a short time span. --Guy Macon (talk) 18:19, 1 June 2020 (UTC)

From the virus' point of view, every new infection is a generation, so it is not a short time span for them. But in this case, a better explanation is the overwhelming of the hospitals in the north of Italy. Abductive (reasoning) 21:32, 7 June 2020 (UTC)

0.3% of New York City died according to excess death and not everyone caught it while Italy is one of the oldest countries on Earth. The normal amount of death in NYC is surprisingly low actually, only about 158 a day which implies an average death age of 150 years. That's ridiculous so obviously a lot of people just leave before they get very old. Often to Florida. There's probably even a positive balance of trade of people that come to New York City for medical treatment or are sent there from suburban or rural hospitals and die (almost 2/3rds of the metro area lives outside city limits). Considering that New Yorkers die half as much as other first worlders due mostly to low chance of death by old age at the residents' age Bergamo doesn't seem like a freak outlier after all. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 20:14, 1 June 2020 (UTC)

Well, even if a disease doesn't kill you, if it makes you so sick that you avoid others (and they avoid you) it may not have much chance to infect others before your immune system overcomes it. --Khajidha (talk) 14:20, 2 June 2020 (UTC)

This may be generally true of viral evolution, but in COVID-19, people mostly die two weeks after the virus has been defeated by their immune system, so from the virus' point of view, it is not killing hosts and is therefore not under selection to become less lethal. Abductive (reasoning) 21:35, 7 June 2020 (UTC)