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The short answer is no, the neutron degeneracy pressure for a neutron star of mass greater than around 2.16 time the mass of our sun (Tolman–Oppenheimer–Volkoff limit) is insufficient to stop it collapsing.

This is well below the mass density where an even horizon would form, thus a neutron star cannot simultaneously be a black hole.

If though there were a state of matter at higher density than neutron matter (perhaps a quark plasma or quark stranglet) that could stabilize the collapse before the critical radius is reached then there may be something denser than a neutron star. But this would not be a black hole.

But according to our current understanding of science, once the collapsing sphere is denser than the the Schwarzschild radius an even horizon forms & within that radius no known state of matter is sufficient to withstand it ultimately forming a singularity.

It would be very difficult with a non-rotating black hole to prove otherwise anyway as the event horizon forms an information boundary to external observers & also for infalling instrumentation.

Not all Neutron stars will expand to the mass/density required to collapse into Black Holes. These ones will exude visible light for about one billion years before cooling down below visible light, then live on for about 1e+38 years before decaying completely into a kind of neutron white dwarf which will then decay further for another 1e+38 years before becoming a neutron black dwarf which will be there to witness the elder years of the universe.

What an incredible mutation for a virus to attain. That has to help spread it so much

It's important what "immunity" you're referring to.

At this point with the number of variants, it's more helpful to think of COVID as a family of illnesses, rather than an illness. Immunity to other variants won't work against Omicron very well. But if you have immunity to Omicron, it works against Omicron.

No the claim was that the victim would collide with the neutron star, assuming they weren't ripped to shreds. Basically all matter would join what was left of the star.

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Can we say for sure that Delta doesn't exist in animal reservoirs somewhere?

No. Most don't. But a neutron star that continues to accumulate mass can. For example if 2 neutron stars collide they can form a black hole. We detected one of these mergers on August 17, 2017.

One that doesn't accumulate mass will, in theory, slowly lose mass until it explodes into a white dwarf in about 10^(38) years (if proton decay is real). Since the universe is much younger than that, this hasn't happened yet.

There are definitely animal reservoirs of older variants. Whitetail deer, rats, and other animal species have their own Covid epidemic of older variants. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a spill over event from one of those sometime in the future.

Yes. The newer variants have won the Darwinian struggle against the old variants. The old variants have been outcompeted.

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It appears that the rate of infection is slightly higher for people without an appendix, but for most people without an appendix, there is no noticeable difference in quality of life.

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>So what does this mean for people who have had their appendix removed? Luckily, not much. “In general, people who have had an appendectomy tend to be relatively healthy and not have any major detrimental effects,” Smith says. (She herself had hers out at age 12.)
Some studies have shown, however, that people without an appendix may have slightly higher rates of infection than those with a functioning organ. “It may also take them slightly longer to recover from illness, especially those in which the beneficial gut bacteria has been flushed out of the body,” Smith added.

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https://time.com/4631305/appendicitis-appendix-gut-bacteria/

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Most people who have their appendix removed don't have problems.

Since appendectomies have been going on for a long time, with many thousands done every years, the evidence is pretty solid that it is generally not a serious problem to have it removed.

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>About 327,000 appendectomies were performed during U.S. hospital stays in 2011, a rate of 10.5 procedures per 10,000 population.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appendectomy

With that rate of the surgery, there are millions of people without an appendix, and most of them have no discernible problems from it. So this is not something one should be particularly worried about.

Most people who have their appendix removed don't miss it at all.

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As far as I'm aware the current virus is more contagious but less severe.

The viruses are racing to find people who are susceptible enough to infect. It would be like Jesse Owens trying to keep up with Usain Bolt. Jesse was fast for his time, but Usain is going to beat him to the finish line e: 99.9999% of the time - enough that if you weren't paying very very close attention, you'd never see that one time Jesse beat him. .

Current dominant strains are purported to be more contagious. Like someone else said you may have caught it but just never showed symptoms (asymptomatic) which does happen in many cases.

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The most common strain in the US currently, omicron xbb 1.5, transmits better than previous strains - the virus would die out if it didn't. There's the pressure exerted by herd immunity, but if the viruses didn't transmit more efficiently, they'd die out.

I also lead a life that should make it really easy to get infected, but the vaccines continue to work. There's a high chance you've been exposed and the infection was so mild you didn't even notice - either because you were vaccinated or immunologically lucky.

I'm also a bit surprised, as when something has been in the news - RSV or norovirus, for example, we've already had it a week prior (kids in daycare/school), so we're certainly at high risk of exposure for something like covid. All I can say is that the vaccines seem to be working.

Are you vaccinated or have you caught it previously (or both)? It’s entirely possible you’ve been exposed but your body fought it off before you could harbor enough to test positive.

We had a houseguest test positive (after previously daily testing negative ☹️), and I was definitely exposed. I felt under the weather for a few days but never actually tested positive. According to what I read in the NYT this means I successfully fought it off. I’m fully vaxxed/boosted.