> All common colds are a coronavirus and newly discovered ones are novel.
Technically not true - coronaviruses cause 15-30% of common colds. The most common cause of the common cold is rhinovirus (30-80%); coronavirus is next, followed by influenza (10-15%), adenovirus, and then other viruses like RSV. The rest of your comment is fairly likely IMHO, though.
> Similarly with the cold, which are coronaviruses like COVID just lead to less lasting immunity.
This common knowledge needs to die.
"Well over 200 virus strains are implicated in causing the common cold, with rhinoviruses, coronaviruses, adenoviruses and enteroviruses being the most common."[0]
> The common cold is a half dozen distinct viruses.
Some of them coronaviruses. It makes sense, but it's funny that we classify the common cold by symptoms, ignoring that the viruses are in different families.
> The USA currently has nine million active cases. I actually think at this point if you have cold symptoms it may be more likely you have covid than a common cold.
Your intuition is wildly off-base here. Nearly all of us catch at least one cold a year, mostly during the winter months. There are, quite literally, hundreds of millions of colds a year. There's also ~half a dozen viruses in circulation at any given time that cause cold-like symptoms, vs. one for SARS-CoV2.
Even that's not true. 15-30% of the viruses that are attributed to the common cold are coronaviruses, and it's pretty clear that the common cold does not behave in the way OP described.
> I believe, however, that the viruses that represent the common cold (rhinoviruses) can be definitely characterized as being much more benign in regards to symptoms.
There are at least four endemic cold-coronaviruses, plus the adenovirus family, plus a bunch more. The severity of most of these respiratory infections depend a lot on patient comorbidities, and immune history.
You may already know this, but for the sake of others, it’s important to realize that many viruses cause what we refer to as ‘common cold’. Coronaviruses are only a minor component of this set of viruses, as low as 1-2% in a study I read (can’t find it now; this value also depends on lots of factors).
> Is there any virus in the history of mankind that does this?
Yes. The common cold is a set of symptoms that are caused by many things, but a majority of instances are caused by rhinovirus. It is possible for people to be infected by the same strain multiple times, but more importantly there are over 100 variations they can catch, and previous infections from one variation do not protect against another. The worst case scenario for covid was exactly that.
The common cold is a tricky one because it's about 200 different viruses, including rhinoviruses, coronaviruses, RSV and parainfluenza. And a bunch more that haven't been identified yet.
Too late to edit my comment, but a somewhat authoritative source claims 10-15% of colds are caused by coronaviruses (UpToDate, if you're curious). The study I read may have been referring to a specific coronavirus that was mentioned in the original post.
Up to 20%, and I've seen numbers as low as 15% [1].
[1] https://www.webmd.com/cold-and-flu/cold-guide/common_cold_ca...
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