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It may be, but that article is also hedging quite a bit. People have a hard time with this intuitively, because we probably live under the weakest selection pr
by jerf 6y ago
It may be, but that article is also hedging quite a bit.
People have a hard time with this intuitively, because we probably live under the weakest selection pressure in the history of planet Earth, but it's vicious down there. Viruses are to a large extent playing a zero-sum game. If they get better at one thing, it almost has to come at the cost of something else, because they've already got all the knobs cranked up as high as they will go just to survive and they don't have a spare energy budget just lying around to put into other things without taking away from something else.
It's not impossible that some mutation was made that made it more infectious and more deadly... but it's a long enough shot that I'd consider the likelihood of incomplete early information and incentives that some parties have to amp up the danger in the presence of such uncertainty higher. Viruses do not routinely become more infectious and more deadly. If they did, we'd all be long dead. The evolution gradient tilts strongly away from that.
- thehappypm 6y agoVery true, especially when you consider that a more deadly variant is highly likely to be associated with things like higher viral load, worse symptoms, and faster symptom onset. A virus that kills twice as many people will likely be harmful for twice as many people -- giving the virus fewer asymptomatic hosts that go around spreading without even knowing it. It's more likely to go the other way; some derpy mutation that reduces viral load, slows incubation, reduces symptoms, makes more super-spreaders.
- sjg007 6y agoThe virus exists in multiple species. It may be perfectly fine in bats and reproduce without killing the bat. In humans, however, it kills.