We don't know a lot about the pathology of COVID, like why is it so much worse than the coronaviruses that already circulate around the world and cause mild flu

We don't know a lot about the pathology of COVID, like why is it so much worse than the coronaviruses that already circulate around the world and cause mild flu-like symptoms. We know a ton about coronaviruses in general, especially basic issues about how they replicate. Herpes viruses use a number of different genes to regulate latent infections. These genes are simply not found in COVID or any coronaviruses. This is not something we could be misunderstanding/missing. It's possible, but would be HIGHLY unlikely, that COVID has some, as yet undiscovered and never before seen in any other coronavirus studied to date, method of achieving latent infection and reactivation.